


I Wanna Have Control

by AbiRainicorn



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - High School, Anxiety, Bisexual Female Character, Boarding School AU, Borderline Personality Disorder, Bullying, Child Abuse, Clementine - Freeform, Coming Out, Crushes, Depression, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Eventual Sex, F/F, First Time, Fluff, Forced Out of the Closet, Friends to Lovers, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, I'm gonna add more tags as I go, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbians, Masturbation, Mental Illness, Modern AU, Mutual Pining, PTSD, Prom, Sexual Assault, Slow Burn, Slurs, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, Violentine, Violet - Freeform, baseball player clementine, but not really smut?? I'm not going into great detail, domestic abuse, graphic depiction of bullying, graphic depiction of sexual assault, graphic depiction of violence, okay it turned into smut, school au, suicidal depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2020-03-01 11:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18799528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbiRainicorn/pseuds/AbiRainicorn
Summary: "I imagine Clementine pitching. Holding the ball behind her glove. The wind-up. Her grunt as it leaves her hand. The crack of the ball against a bat. I imagine her eyes. Focused. Determined. I imagine being on the bleachers with an excuse to watch her. Moths hitting the lampposts around the field. Summer. Humidity curling her hair even more.I didn’t think I liked baseball."This one gets deep. Written from Violet's perspective. A boarding school AU where Minerva bullies Violet (and Clementine) and they help each other through the bullying, slowly falling in love. (Okay, maybe quickly for Violet.) It goes past just bullying, though. Dark stuff, even the first chapter. So be warned! Violentine. Boarding school AU. Friends to lovers. Fluff.





	1. You Were Standing Taller Than a Mountainside

**Author's Note:**

> AHHH YAAY I'M BACK AGAIN :D
> 
> Thanks for all the feedback on my last story. It hasn't been long at all since it was posted but I'm already feeling better in general, in part because of all of your kind words and compliments! It really means the world to me when I get feedback.
> 
> Anyway, high school was hell. I've been graduated for two years but people my age are graduating this year and it's strange. I feel no attachment to it, except for that I recall when my sister graduated and she seemed so much more mature than me. Preparing for college, saying goodbye to friends who are attending schools far away... and now I'm that age and everyone around me seems so much more immature.
> 
> I decided to write a high school/boarding school AU because I can write it true to form. Been there, done that. But also because I went through a lot of bullshit in high school and a lot of scenarios I'll be writing about are based on scenarios I've experienced. I thought, and I still think, 'don't I deserve at least one good thing?' and I hoped my Princess Charming would swoop in and save my foul mood but alas, it didn't happen. I'm still waiting for my one good thing; one good thing that'll last. But I can just imagine Violet having a mega shitty time and Clementine just making it better somehow.
> 
> I was encouraged by someone to write this in first person perspective because I typically write in third person and I must say it's refreshing. It's much easier to express a character's emotions and understand things from their point of view where writing in third person is more objective. The only contention I had with this is that I want it to seem like Violet's telling the story and, sorry to Violet, but she's not nearly as eloquent as I am. So there's my dilemma. Do I tone it down or do I give Violet a different voice?
> 
> I was able to meet in the middle. I think Violet is awkward IRL but in her own head her thoughts are clear and concise. But I still tried keeping her sort of tone. It's interesting putting yourself in someone else's shoes, but interesting in a fun way. It's cool getting to envision how Violet thinks and what her reasons are for doing the things that she does, and I hope I did a good job of portraying that.
> 
> I based this first chapter off of a short film called Homophobia (you can watch it on shortoftheweek.com) because the depiction of assault/bullying is just so raw and real. In too many stories the bullying is almost comically unrealistic, but people in real life are vicious and often will stop at nothing to make you bend to their will. I didn't use another incident in the film yet but I plan to take from it because I can see it happening and it'd be awesome.
> 
> The chapter is named after a song called Cut Your Bangs by Radiator Hospital, but I personally prefer the Girlpool version. But I actually recommend listening to Creep by Radiohead because I imagine the lyrics describe how Violet feels about herself in relation to others, especially Clementine. Additionally the mood is spot on.
> 
> It actually has sentiment to me because (and shit, this is fucking personal) my best-friend-turned-abuser and I used to sing it together. It took me forever to be able to listen to the song again and not want to vomit, despite me liking the song itself so much. And that's what the title is based on as well. 
> 
> Without further ado.
> 
> Song Recommendation: Creep- Radiohead

_ Pick pick pick _

 

I never get enough time to myself. I never get enough time  _ for  _ myself. Despite this, I feel like I have eternity to sit with my own shit; my mental health. My gayness. My living situation, if you could even call it that. 

 

Everything happens too quick. I’ve always known I was gay, but I forced myself to forget about it, as I do with everything I don’t want to deal with. This isn’t the right time to be gay- to have feelings for girls- or to even have a sexuality at all. I have enough going on to need to process this shit. I’m not ready to come out. So I try to fly under the radar. I don’t tell anyone, even though I have nobody but myself to tell. 

 

All the time I’ve spent just thinking about it. Just thinking. About girls; about myself. My relation to them. It becomes a thought loop where it’s all I think about and nothing else I do stops the cycle. I’d lie in bed staring at the ceiling, willing my body to fall the fuck asleep, and all I could think about is how I’m gonna even begin to unpack this. I’m so far from even being with anyone, anyway.

 

_ Pick pick pick _

 

So I taught myself to get out of situations. To shut the fuck up. To fit in by being completely unnoticeable. Be driven. Be useful. I don’t raise my hand- I don’t tell the teacher- I don’t fight back. That’s what they want. You can’t give them that. If you can’t be worth anything you have to be worth so little that nobody even cares. Who cares if Violet is gay? She doesn’t have any value for her sexuality to even be something people dispute. Violet doesn’t exist. Violet is nobody.

 

I haven’t become worthless yet.

 

The showers are less ‘showers’ and more a long room densely packed with spickets, spraying water out of them like sprinklers. I’ve never felt smaller, and yet like nobody can keep their eyes off of me. The only mirrors are out of bounds, so I can only look at my reflection through the wet white tiles of the wall. I look at the reflection beside me instead. I can see her looking at me.

 

Water washes over me and my scalp itches. It’s as though the grease is leaving my head and pooling up at my feet like one of those rainbow puddles of oil. I tilt my head back and let it hit my face; I close my eyes and lap at the water, and it tastes of rust. It’s not the best, but I can’t keep my mouth from drying out. Then I try to stop and wash again, but it just happens again and I have to drink more and I imagine myself filling up with rust, turning as red as a penny.

 

Red as Minerva’s hair. I scrub at my scalp until the shampoo is all frothy and I hate not being able to cover myself; what little breasts I have. I hate that my back is completely exposed to all the girls that walk behind me, and I hate that when I wash out the shampoo I still have to put in conditioner. I hate that I don’t shave, even though I’d hate shaving in front of these people. Bubbles tickle my feet as I wash my body. I scrub and scrub and scrub. Till it hurts.

 

As I’m letting the soap trickle off of me and down the drain, the reflection beside me moves. Her eyes flicker over to my reflection, pausing, and then they go back. Like a flame, if flames were slime green. As I’m washing the conditioner out of my hair the eyes flicker again, but this time they don’t go back. They remain in a dead stare, not just on my reflection, but on  _ my  _ eyes, and that’s how I know she wants my attention.

 

But I don’t give it to her. I close my eyes and feel the water running off of me again, like I’m the statue in a fountain. Still; don’t move. Don’t open my eyes. She wants me to look at her. I tilt my head this way and that to get every angle.

 

“Vi.”

 

I cover my chest again, waiting for her to leave. If she’s done I’ll hear her go and then I can finish. My heart pounds under my arm, so hard I can feel it in my throat. I let the water run over my face in an attempt to keep it from flushing, but it’s in vain. I can feel it.

 

“ _ Vi. _ ” 

 

The knot in my throat bobs as I swallow. I imagine a giant cartoon-ish bubble moving up and down my neck; it feels like it has spikes on it. It burns and scratches and my heartbeat doesn’t help. The red rakes down my entire body and I can feel myself changing color- becoming rust- and I can’t hide. I can’t cover myself or run away or crawl into a hole and die so I just stand there.

 

“ _ VIOLET! _ ”

 

I open my eyes just in time to see her hand slap down on the handle and I’m left in the open air, without even water to buffer- distract myself- from all the turmoil my body’s going through. She stands taller than a mountainside between me and the wall; so tall I have to look up to see her, otherwise my head falls at her breasts.

 

I kick myself for looking at her. I told myself I wouldn’t but my eyes fall right in front of me- right at her chest- and then they go up, up, up. Past her prominent collarbones, neck exposed, and then her face. Her hair plastered to the sides of it; eyes green like the algae in the creek I used to play in. She scowls but a leering smile jabs at the corners of her mouth.

 

Then she takes a step forward, crossing her arms, and I step back. I shouldn’t engage. I notice there’s another reflection beside me, and then I notice there’s another one on the other side. Then I notice two more reflections flanking those, and more flanking those, and I realize everyone is watching. Don’t engage.

 

But she takes another step, so I’m left two inches from my chest touching her crossed arms, and it’s fucking cold. My entire body breaks out in goosebumps and she’s close enough that she can tell, but I don’t want her to think I have them because she’s scaring me. I’m past being scared. I’m just sick.

 

Sick when she glares at me and she’s unable to keep scowling, instead smirking, her nostrils flared like a bull. Her teeth a tinge of yellow; and the only way I can tell is because her skin is as close to white as anyone can get.

 

“I didn’t think you were woken up enough yet.” Her voice is grating and loud enough for everyone to hear.

 

I say nothing.

 

_ Pick pick pick _

 

“But I think now I’ve got your attention. Because look at you.” She takes a half step closer, and now we’re touching. Don’t recoil; don’t move. Don’t say anything.

 

I say nothing.

 

“When’s the last time you’ve showered,  _ Vi-oh-let _ ? You look pretty uncomfortable. Maybe because you’re not used to being in here.”

 

As if she could get any closer, she takes another half step, but it just smooshes her arms to mine- crossed against my chest to cover myself- and she utters a breathy laugh.

 

“Or maybe it’s because you’re surrounded by girls.”

 

I wasn’t ready to be out yet.

 

Don’t speak. Don’t say a fucking word. That’s what she wants. Everyone stands idly by, watching this unfold as though it were a lesson. It’s like they’re taking notes. It’s written all over their faces that this is what they’re gonna be talking about when they go back to their dorms. When they all sit at lunch in a circle around the table, passing it on to one another like a game of telephone. Except this time they don’t have to twist it for it to sound bad.

 

“Even if any of us were a  _ dyke _ like you, nobody would even kiss you. Because you don’t shower, do you?”

 

_ Don’t say anything. Don’t speak. _

 

But I can’t help myself. Fight or flight kicks in and I use the lesser known third option,  _ useless verbal attack. _ It tumbles shakily out of my lips. “Oh, fuck you.”

 

She just leers. She does it as though it’s all she’s good at. “I bet you want to.”

 

My forehead crinkles between my brows. I shouldn’t have said anything the first time and I’m not about to make another mistake so I shut my mouth.

 

“I bet you want to fuck me. I bet you want your mouth between my legs.”

 

For a moment, I break eye contact, and when I notice the entourage surrounding us- the sheer size of it- I blush.  _ Fuck!  _

 

“See? You totally want to. But I’m not surprised. Nobody here is.”

 

And then the tips of her toes are touching mine. And she knows they are, but she doesn’t mention it. She doesn’t have to mention it because she knows I know, too. My breath is growing heavy and she probably feels it on her neck.

 

“But you don’t have to be afraid, Violet.”

 

She bends down like she’s speaking to a child, her hands on her thighs, and her breasts are literally two seconds away from touching mine, her face right in front of me. So close I can see the green threading with gold in her eyes. I imagine our skin touching- wet on wet- and I shiver.

 

Then she whispers, and nobody else can hear it. She doesn’t want them to. “ _ Because we’re all girls here, right? _ ” 

 

She stands tall again, pushing past me, her arm clipping my shoulder. I watch her reflection go rip a towel from the stack, wrapping it around herself, and then she skirts around to the locker room with the rest of the leaving crowd. Weaving through them like a fish.

 

I turn on the water again and by now it’s cold, but I need the cold, anyway. I let it wash over me and get the rest of the soap out of my hair as my heart rate goes back to normal. As my nerves stop being so frayed around the edges. And the longer I’m there, the less naked I feel, despite how naked I really am. Nobody’s in here except me, and I feel like just… lying here, letting the water hit me so long that I become numb to the feeling.

 

But instead I turn it off and go grab a towel, wringing out my hair and patting my body dry. I look down at myself and think Minerva might be right. My legs are covered in blonde hairs, and so is the in between. Because fuck bending down to shave, fuck spreading my legs to shave, fuck sitting down to shave; I don’t care if everyone else does, I’m not gonna. I don’t want them looking at me doing it. I’m only willing to lift up my arms and even that is stressful. So if nobody wants  _ me _ , so be it, because I don’t really want  _ them _ , anyway.

 

_ Pick pick pick _

 

I stand until there’s no way anybody is left changing in the locker room and then I walk through the doors, and the lack of steam in the air hits me like a sheet of glass. I recoil against the breeze and make a beeline for my locker, the rest of the lockers open and closed haphazardly, stuff falling out of them, stuff squeezing between the cracks; because that’s what happens when you unleash a girl-tornado upon a pristine room.

 

I try my combination once and fuck it up, so I try to reset the lock but I fuck up the reset and then I finally reset it properly and tear open the door, my deodorant and balled up clothes spilling out. I’m able to catch them as they fall. 

 

It smells of all kinds of flowery perfume, like I’m standing in the middle of a spring meadow, and I allow myself to be there for a moment. To envision the pops of red and blue and yellow like candies; feel the petals squishing between my toes and under my feet- the taste of pollen in my mouth- the sound of silence echoing through my ears like a drone. Air moving through my body as though I were nothing; as though there were nothing to move through.

 

I want to be there so badly. I want to be as far away from here as possible. Not even a measurable distance; I want to discover a different plane. A different timeline, where I’m not surrounded by the stench of old school books and people who pick on those half their size. Where these people and these sounds and these sights are as far from my thoughts as they are from my body. 

 

Maybe someone would be there with me. Maybe there’s someone who hates this as much as I do. Maybe she’s a girl. Maybe we’re in love. Maybe she’d taste like strawberries and she’d pick me flowers and they’d be special to me, even though we’re surrounded by flowers anyway, because  _ she  _ picked them, with her own hands. And she’d hold mine and my chest would feel delightfully tight.

 

I clutch my things to my chest, breathing in, wondering if any girl smells like any of the scents I can pick up from the room. I focus on one and I breathe it in, feeling it fill my lungs. I turn around to sit, all my stuff overflowing my hands.

 

But I’m not alone. She stands there- the fucking menace- her expression unchanging as I gasp and fall to my ass, my deodorant dropping to the floor, and I clutch my clothes to my chest. My knees knock together like a dog with its tail between its legs and the cold metal of the lockers pierces my back. The flowers disappear, all their petals melting in thin air, and it doesn’t smell like a meadow anymore; it’s more like a can of hairspray.

 

She’s not even changed yet. She takes a step closer and I can’t physically get any farther from her. I just close my eyes and take a deep breath, expecting  _ something.  _

 

All it is is her voice. “I know you’re gay, Violet.”

 

Nobody is here. There’s no audience watching; just her and I, and that’s how I know she doesn’t do this for attention. She truly gets a thrill out of just causing me distress- getting me in vulnerable positions- and I determine that I can talk. Because what’s she gonna do, anyway?

 

I’m surprised at how small my voice sounds. “So fucking what?” I keep my eyes closed.

 

Her voice grows closer. “I see you staring at us in the shower. You can’t keep your eyes off our tits.”

 

I bite the inside of my lip. “Bullshit.”

 

But she doesn’t acknowledge any of my responses, like she’s a video game character and she’s already rehearsed this so nothing I say is gonna change what comes out of her mouth. So I keep quiet.

 

“You even look lower. You even look at me.”

 

For the millionth time I wish I could destroy her. I wish I could be strong enough to knock her out, but I’ve thought about this enough to know I wouldn’t stop there. I’d keep hitting her until there isn’t anything left to hit. Until she doesn’t exist anymore and all the anger and rage I’ve kept inside for years gets beaten out of me and nobody fucks with me anymore.

 

My eyes shoot open as something touches my knee. I look down to see her hand, still wet, and she pushes to open my legs. I try to fight it but her gaze doesn’t leave mine and I just let it happen because I figure if she can’t do this, she’s just gonna figure out something else.

 

My legs are spread, my towel draped between them; the only thing covering me. I hold my things close to my chest and I can feel it rising and falling under my arms. I hate that I have to remind myself that I’m trembling because I hate this and not because she’s arousing me.

 

And then she kneels between my legs, caging me in with her arms at either side of my head. And just as I think ‘wait, she’s wearing a towel, how is it being held up,’ it falls, sliding down her back like an avalanche, slowing over the slope of her butt and then dropping to the floor in a pathetic heap. When it’s on the floor it doesn’t look big enough to cover her anyway.

 

She presses her forehead to mine, her eyes stabbing me, and I know my own eyes are open so wide they could pop out of my head.

 

“Do you like this, Violet?” she whispers. “Does it make you wet?”

 

I speak despite it being futile. “Get the fuck off of me,” I spit.

 

Instead she moves one hand from beside my face, resting it on the inside of my knee again, and she breathes out. I feel it on my face. And all I can do is bite my lip, trying to hold back a scream or a cry or whatever is clawing from inside me.

 

“Do you want my face between your legs? Fucking you with my tongue?” Her hand moves farther up my thigh, the towel moving with it. My breath comes out in shaky little puffs and her touch burns me. It feels like getting a million little splinters.

 

“Stop. Now.” My voice doesn’t hold the ferocity of my want for her to leave me the fuck alone.

 

She doesn’t care. “Or do you want my fingers inside of you?” Her hand moves farther along my thigh. It’s almost  _ there.  _ I try to close my legs and get her away but she only gets closer.

 

And her lips are so close to mine. If she wanted to kiss me, she could, and the thought of her doing that makes me want to vomit. I want to scream. I want to hit and bite and kick and scratch and wreck but all I can do is sit there and take it. I don’t want to get in trouble and have to explain what she did to anybody. I’m past getting help.

 

“Or do you want to kiss me; right now?” she says, and then I watch as she closes her eyes. As though she expects me to kiss her. And she brings her face closer and her breath is on my face and her lips are brushing mine.

 

But then her hand touches me,  _ right there,  _ and I squeak, sucking my lips into my mouth and she backs away, staring at me incredulously.

 

She scoffs, moving her hand away. She huffs. “Holy shit.”

 

A cry nips at my nose and eyes. She brings her hand between our faces, her pointer and middle fingertip glistening with something. It’s definitely not water, and I actually know exactly what it is, and knowing exactly what it is nauseates me. I want to disappear.

 

_ Pick pick pick _

 

She waggles her fingers in front of my face, as though she has something I want. Does she know I don’t want this? Is that why she’s doing it?

 

“It  _ did  _ make you wet.” And then she gets her fingers so close to my lips I fear she’s gonna smear them on me. 

 

But she doesn’t. She smears them on my towel, stands up, and I snap my legs back shut as though I want them to stay that way forever. What the fuck is happening? The room is spinning. I feel like I need to grab something. I feel like my head isn’t part of my body.

 

And she’s looking at me. If I didn’t know any better I’d think she thinks I’m attractive. But I do know better, so I know she just likes seeing the mess she’s made. My stringy blonde hair; the chapped lips she’d almost kissed. My towel swallows me whole. I’m a sack of bones.

 

And I find myself staring right back at her. She shaves. She shaves everything. Her hips are full and she’s thin as a rail everywhere else, her ribs just barely poking out as if to say ‘hey! We’re here,’ here among a statue of a girl. You could find her cut out of marble in a museum somewhere. She’s a tree and I want to cut her down. To pieces. I want her to be as ugly on the outside as she is on the inside. She has everything I don’t. Even breasts.

 

She has power. As I sit here shaking, she sneers above me, her eyes raking over every inch of me and I feel naked. She looks me over one more time. She knows I was looking at her, too.

 

And then she slaps me. Backhanded. Girl’s a tank, because she hits me so hard I fall to my side, my legs swinging up beside me. “You disgust me, Violet.”

 

I lie there in my awkward position and see her getting dressed in my peripheral. She’s fast as a whip because she’s done as soon as she started, bum-rushing the door and slamming it shut. I hold in my cry until I assume she’s far enough to not hear it, but knowing her, she’ll have no peace of mind until she does, so she’s standing at the door waiting. But I don’t exactly care. 

 

So my cry contorts my face and  tears leak from my eyes, and it stings when they roll over the cheek she slapped. Like the skin is raw. And I can’t do anything but lie there with my stuff in my hands. 

 

_ Pick pick pick _

 

Eternity is back, and I’m sitting with my own shit again. Thinking. I don’t want to process this, ever. I don’t want to make sense of it or find a hidden meaning in it or understand why or how or anything. I just want to dissolve in thin air and find my meadow full of flowers. So I breathe in. Out. But all the colors run together and Minerva’s back in my thoughts again, and I wail.

 

Did she just…?

 

I don’t have enough time to find my answer before the door creaks open again, and I shoot straight up to my feet expecting to find her standing there again, coming back to fuck with my head. But it’s not her.

 

I can recognize that face anywhere. Clementine Everett. 

 

When she sees me standing there her face falls, as though someone’s just told her something horrible. Her hair’s pulled back in two pigtails and she wears a tee shirt and exercise shorts, socks pulled up to her calves. Wearing a baseball cap as she always does.

 

“Holy shit, why are you bleeding?” She rushes over, looking over every cubic centimeter of my face.

 

“ _ Bleeding? _ ” She’s taller than me, too. I look up at her as she looks down at me. I feel small again.

 

“Violet, you’re bleeding. Did someone do this to you?” She reaches out and swipes her fingers across my cheek, holding them up between our faces. She’s right. I’m bleeding. 

 

She knows my name?

 

“Minerva. Because who else?” I say, and my voice shakes. I sound like I’ve been crying for hours; I’m hoarse and nasally and I don’t want her seeing me like this.

 

She backs up a step and I can see it in her eyes. I panic. “Please. Please don’t tell anyone.”

 

Her eyebrows knit together in concern. “Why not?”

 

“Nobody will do shit. It’ll just make everything worse.”

 

“Violet.”

 

“Please.” I plead with her. I don’t need this right now. 

 

She sighs. “Okay. But I’m gonna help you.”

 

“You don’t have to do that.”

 

She looks me in the eyes. Hers are so impossibly brown. “What if I just want to?”

 

Another round of tears push their way through my eyes and I nod.

 

“Don’t go anywhere. I’m gonna get band aids and shit. Okay?”

 

I nod again.

 

She’s like lightning on her feet. I barely hear the  _ pat pat pat  _ of her tennis shoes as she shuts the door and rounds the corner, and then I’m alone again.

 

_ Pick pick pick _

 

Then I’m struck with the urge to run. To put my clothes on and go somewhere far.  _ Now _ I wanna run?  _ Now  _ I wanna escape? Clementine wouldn’t have to deal with me. She could do whatever she needed to do and I wouldn’t ruin someone else’s day, and I could be alone. With my own damn thoughts. Without anyone bothering me or needing to know what’s wrong or needing to fix me.

 

But I don’t want to be alone, at the same time. It’s a paradox I’m always struck with. I wish I could manifest myself into another person who doesn’t hate themselves so much that they assume everyone else hates them, too. Even though it does seem everyone hates me. Except Clementine, apparently.

 

I sit down as the door creaks open again and she must’ve gotten her shit together in the hallway because she’s cool as a cucumber. Just strides over with way too many band aids and some other shit balled up in her other hand.

 

“Okay, this is gonna hurt.” She stands in front of me, taller than a mountainside.

 

“Putting a band aid on my face?” 

 

She sits down next to me, which is much more comforting than her towering over me, and she probably realizes this. She sets the array of medical shit on her lap and brandishes an alcohol wipe, still in the packet.

 

“Oh, shit, no. Don’t use that on me.”

 

She tears open the paper, the sound ripping through the room, and I cringe. “I don’t want it to get infected.”

 

“I don’t care if it gets infected.”

 

She rolls her eyes. “Just hold still, okay?”

 

She scoots closer, her face so close to mine that I’m forced to look at her. She has thick black eyelashes and if I weren’t so close to her I’d think she were wearing mascara. She also has freckles that I can only see if I look real close. 

 

I jump when she sops up a river of blood from my cheek and I brace myself for the sting of when it hits the cut. I didn’t brace myself hard enough, though, because I jump again when it reaches.

 

If I hadn’t been an emotional wreck already I wouldn’t be crying again, but I can’t help myself. It doesn’t even hurt that bad. It feels better than when I got slapped, but it fucking stings.

 

And then Clementine just goes “Shhh. Shhh, it’s okay.” Dabbing at my wound with nimble fingers. Delicate, like she could break me.

 

If I hadn’t been an emotional wreck already my heart wouldn’t be pounding. I wouldn’t be wanting to fall into her and have her hold me as I cry. I wouldn’t be looking deep into her eyes, as though I could find something other than brown and gold.

 

_ Pick pick pick _

 

She peels the paper off the band aid and plasters it to my face, and the softness of the cotton is soothing. If I hadn’t already been so confused I’d know the reason why she kept looking at my face for so long was because she was making sure I was okay. Not because she found me attractive.

 

After all, my eyes are probably red around the edges and my eyelashes are probably all wet and clumped together and my face is probably all splotchy and pink. But then I doubt myself because she’s holding both my hands. For a split second I think she might be fucking with me like Minerva, and then for another split second I think she might want to kiss me. 

 

And then for a much longer amount of time I realize that she’s actually looking down at my hands and I’ve been picking at my fingers so much they’ve also started to bleed. I spread my fingers out as if to say I’m not going to pick them anymore, and she smiles, just at one corner of her mouth.

 

She peels the paper off of another band aid. “I always come prepared.” She deftly wraps it around my thumb and I notice how much I’m shaking. 

 

“I’m sorry.” My voice comes out in a squeak.

 

“For what?”

 

I feel stupid. “Dunno.”

 

She doesn’t seem to mind. “How’d she cut you?”

 

“She must’ve been wearing a ring.”

 

“Punched you?”

 

“Slapped.”

 

Clementine nods, a scowl creeping across her face. “Must’ve slapped you real fuckin’ hard.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because you’re crying.”

 

I don’t want her to think that a slap is enough to make me cry, but I don’t want her to know that Minerva did whatever the fuck she just did either, so I lie. “Yeah.”

 

“I wish I could kill that bitch.”

 

“Why?” I ask too many questions.

 

“She’s the reason I don’t shower with everyone else.”

 

“And you don’t shower with everyone else, because…?” Fuck, Violet. Shut the fuck up.

 

Her face falls for a second. “...I’m not sure I’m ready to tell anyone why.”

 

For a split second I think Clementine might be telling me that she’s gay, but then I think better of it. Even if she were, I don’t want to take the risk of her finding out I’m a dyke.

 

Because if she knew I’m a dyke, she wouldn’t quite like me, either. So if I’m a liar, so be it. Fuck me for wanting to have someone care about me, I guess. If she knew I’m a dyke she wouldn’t care about me enough to drop everything she was doing to help me. She wouldn’t nurse my wounds. And, fuck- if I don’t need someone to nurse my fucking wounds.

 

“Sometimes I wonder what they were thinking. Putting a whole bunch of delinquent kids in the same place,” I say. “What the fuck do they expect?”

 

“Sometimes I think it just entertains them.” She finishes up wrapping my fingers and scoots back. Her feet point towards mine.

 

“Really?”

 

“I mean, yeah. And where else is everyone gonna send the kids they don’t want?”

 

“The streets, I guess.” I wrap my towel tighter around myself.

 

“Being home was better.” Clementine’s tone is wistful.

 

“I’m not sure I feel that way yet.”

 

Clementine nods, leaning back against the lockers. “Understandable.”

 

“You should go do whatever you were gonna do. I’m fine.”

 

“I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you’re clearly not fine.”

 

I sigh. “I’m fine enough that I don’t need a babysitter.”

 

I feel bad because she winces. I know she’s just trying to help. “Well, when you need a babysitter, I’m in dorm number fifty-three.”

 

I mumble back. “Forty-seven.”

 

It piques her interest. “Brody’s dorm?”

 

“God, you know everyone.” I can’t hide my smile, even through my tears.

 

“Trust me, it’s not because I want to.”

 

“Brody’s cool, though. Leaves me alone most of the time.”

 

Clementine smiles back. “At least I don’t know Brody because she won’t leave me alone.”

 

“How do you know her, then?”

 

“She’s catcher.”

 

I imagine Clementine pitching. Holding the ball behind her glove. The wind-up. Her grunt as it leaves her hand. The crack of the ball against a bat. I imagine her eyes. Focused. Determined. I imagine being on the bleachers with an excuse to watch her. Moths hitting the lampposts around the field. Summer. Humidity curling her hair even more.

 

I didn’t think I liked baseball.

 

“Anyway, I think I should leave you alone now. You’ve probably had enough of everybody.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Don’t mention it.” She stands up, heading toward the showers. “Uhhh, is this yours?”

 

I pick my deodorant from her hand, the lid cracked. “Yep.”

 

She faces me and looks me in the eye. “See you around, Violet.” She offers a sympathetic grin.

 

She rounds the corner and I hear the water as she turns it on. I begin to cry again, bringing all the band aid paper to the trash. I know I’m the only person in here but I don’t feel alone. I feel like everyone’s watching me as I remove my towel and get dressed, glad my cargo pants hide my unshaven legs. Then I realize Clementine’s seen them and I cry harder.

 

I throw my towel in the hamper and round back to grab my vest, and that’s when I see Minerva’s towel still in a pile on the floor. I don’t pick it up, though, because it’s not my fucking mess.

 

No. Not my mess. My mess is my fucking sexuality. My mess is between my legs, squishing around in my underwear, and I’m not even sure if it’s from Clementine or being… Fuck. From whatever Minnie just did to me. I hate that I can’t control myself. I can’t control what arouses me. I can’t control what I feel or what I think.

 

I can’t control myself when I pass by the showers to leave. I take a deep breath, willing myself not to, but I open my eyes to find Clementine with her eyes closed, face poised to the stream of water, opening and closing her mouth as she drinks. Her lips a particular shade of brown that would taste much better than my shade of pink.

 

I rush past, throwing the door open and flying down the hall. At least I can eat my feelings.

 

I grab my tray and scarf down all the pancakes. Chug my orange juice and shovel all of my fruit into my mouth. I sit in a chair against the wall, not somewhere where I’m meant to eat, but fuck being around other people. My empty tray rests in my lap while I pick pancake bits out of my teeth with my tongue, and my eyes feel damp and heavy. I don’t care that everyone can see that I was crying.

 

I pick people out from the crowd. Brody, sitting with some other members of the baseball team. I spot Minerva and I swear I almost choke on my own vomit. She’s surrounded by people, her twin sister across from her at the same table. And then Clementine.

 

She sits with some dude with a mullet. I think his name’s Marlon? And a guy with dreads. Louis. A guy who I always see with his face stuck in a book or writing in a journal. Another boy with a considerable-sized afro. Another dude. And another. And another. 

 

The bell rings and everyone leaves, tossing all their trays into the garbage absentmindedly as they continue their conversations. I watch everyone as they go, making sure Minerva isn’t coming back for me, and she doesn’t. Brody follows behind a trail of baseball girls and Clementine walks alone, the rest of her group going in a different direction.

 

The rest of my classes are boring and stressful at the same time. I’m done focusing on lessons now; not only do I not care, but it’s almost the end of the year, anyway. Then I’m out of here. Not sure where I’m ending up. But because I don’t focus, the sound of the teacher drones on in the background while I’m left to think. Naturally I think about Minerva. My entire body clenches and the speed of my breathing causes me to go lightheaded. I almost don’t hate it. It’s like I’m floating.

 

And I wonder if everyone around me talked about me at breakfast or lunch. If they know I’m a dyke. If they know about what Minnie did to me; and I hope they don’t. It’s humiliating. Whenever someone’s gaze lands on mine I assume they’re thinking about it. They’re wondering if they could get me wet, too. They know the bandaid is on my face because she slapped me. They know I sat in there crying.

 

I wonder if Clementine knows. If when I pass room fifty-three and knock on the door, she’ll slam it in my face. She’ll wish she’d never helped me. She’ll thank Minerva for just one thing; handing my ass to me. She’ll talk about me at lunch and she’ll avoid me in the locker room.

 

“Violet.”

 

I don’t care if I become greasy and dirty; I don’t want to shower anywhere near Minerva. I’ll hide in my room for the rest of the school year for all I care. What’ll they do? Kick me out? Brody’s nice. She won’t complain. She has depression, anyway. She gets it. 

 

But what if Brody knows? What if I’ll enter the dorm to find all my stuff thrown around? What if she reads my journal, where I’ve written about this shit? Where I’ve detailed fantasies and ogled over girls? Maybe I’ve even ogled over her. What if she refuses to stay with me for the rest of the year and I have to tell the dean it’s because I’m a fucking lesbian?

 

“ _ Violet. _ ”

 

It’s not fair. I’ve never even kissed a girl before and I’m treated like I’ve fucked every girl in the school. I’m not liked enough by anybody for them to want to fuck me and suddenly I’m treated like I want every girl between my legs. Like I enjoy being touched. Like I enjoy being looked at. Like the thought of someone appreciating me doesn’t disgust me.

 

How dare she make it seem otherwise. Like I liked it when she touched me. Like I enjoy the fact that I haven’t been kissed but I’ve had a girl I hate finger me. 

 

And it’s no surprise that the teacher chooses Minerva to be my partner for our final project. What do they get out of this? Out of seeing me suffer? If their goal is for us to get along, it’s not gonna happen, and they know this. So why?

 

“ _ VIOLET! _ ”

 

I open my eyes to see Clementine there, standing in her door frame, her arms crossed at her chest. I hope it’s because she’s bored or cold and not because she’s angry. I wasn’t expecting her to actually get the door.

 

“Hey, sorry. I’ve just… had a hell of a day,” I say, almost forgetting what I came here to ask. My heart flutters.

 

“I totally understand.” She props the door open with her heel, and I admire how non-awkwardly she does it. I know that’s ironically an awkward way to describe it, but I wouldn’t know how else to. I can’t do more than two things at once without fucking something up. “You know, if you need anything, I’m here.”

 

I offer a smile, just at one corner of my mouth. “I just have a question.”

 

“Shoot.”

 

I can’t keep my eyes on hers. I look past her, into her room, and then I realize that might be rude so I just look at the floor instead. “Have you heard anything about me?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

I swallow. “I mean. Anything. From anyone. At all.”

 

“Rumors?”

 

I go to pick my fingers but then I realize they’re still bandaged. “Yeah.”

 

“No.”

 

My forehead creases. “Really?”

 

“Nope. Haven’t heard anything.” She closes the door behind her, leaning against it. “Why?”

 

“I expected Minerva to have spread something about me by now.” I cross my arms, too, not sure what to do with my hands.

 

“If I hear anything, do you want me to let you know?”

 

I meet her gaze again. “Yeah.”

 

“Deal.” She mimics swishing water around her mouth but it’s just air. “If you want, you can tell me what happened in there.”

 

I breathe in. Out. “It was nothing. She just slapped me.”

 

Clementine tilts her head. “For no reason?”

 

How much should I hide? “Nah, she had a reason.”

 

“What reason?” 

 

I can’t blow this off. She’s looking right at me. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

 

Clementine looks down at her feet. “Sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”

 

“No, no, it’s fine.”

 

She smiles, looking at my face again. “I know we don’t really know each other and all, but you can trust me. Just know that.”

 

I want to prove her wrong. No, I  _ do  _ know you! I know you’re pitcher and you keep your hair in two little pigtails all the time and you’re always wearing your baseball cap and you sit at lunch with a whole bunch of boys and you’ve made my day somewhat bearable,  _ so thank you,  _ but instead I just say a meek “Thank you.”

 

“No problem.” She opens the door again, smiling at me before she closes it behind her, and I just stare at the big black ‘53’ on the door for a few moments, trying to burn her face in my memory before I turn on my heel and speed down the hallway.

 

I reach my room and close the door gently behind me out of habit. Even though Brody’s a rock. She lies stomach-down on her bed, head facing to the wall, on top of all the covers, and I start to sniffle as the tears roll again. As my face reddens and gets all prickly. 

 

I rip off the band aids and throw them into the trash can, tearing the one off my face and looking at how the blood’s turned brown before that one finds itself in the trash can, too. I wriggle out of my vest and let it drop to the floor before I throw myself on my bed, sobbing into my pillow.

 

Sobbing for all the times I hadn’t today. Sobbing because I couldn’t while Minnie had her way with me. Because she’s assaulted me in multiple different forms, and because now I have to work with her on our final project, because if I don’t her grade’s gonna tank and she’s gonna take it all out on me and I’m not strong enough to stop her. Sobbing because my head hurts from holding it in.

 

Sobbing because Clementine’s hair is so impossibly curly, her eyelashes almost equal thickness. Sobbing because her lips are so soft-looking and kissable. Sobbing because she cares about me and she helped me in one of my worst moments. Sobbing because she’s gonna abandon me when she finds out I’m gay, as if she even cares enough about me for leaving me to be considered abandonment. Because I wanna sit with her at dinner. Because I want to know everything there is to know about her.

 

Sobbing because I have a crush on Clementine-fucking-Everett.


	2. My Heart Is Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When we don’t have anything to talk about, I have all too much time to look at her face. She’s summer- the brown of her eyes- warm. The brown of her hair, also warm, the curls so controlled yet playful. Like her handwriting. Her skin, like she hasn’t missed a day of sunshine. The whole of her is just so warm, like she’s a sunbeam and I could lie inside her for hours, when she looks away I wonder what she’s thinking about, when she parts her lips to lick them I wonder what she tastes like-"
> 
> Everyone spends time with everyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL FUCK
> 
> This took way longer to write than I would've hoped, but luckily it's because I've been busy, and luckily I've been busy with things that don't suck. For example! I got myself a job!
> 
> But anyway. Last night was fucking rough, and it's strange how stark a contrast today has been. I just curled up into myself sobbing my fuckin eyes out last night because I felt unlovable and lonely. And the weather didn't help; it was dreary and rainy and gross. 
> 
> But if you don't know this about me, writing is a catharsis for me. And I tend to write about things I've been through or am going through because expressing it through literature just... helps, in a way. Things suck less when you can make them beautiful somehow. So, no, I'm not some weirdo who writes about sexual assault and sexual this and sexual that and mental illness this and mental illness that; it's something I've actually experienced, and it's horrible. I don't try to glamorize it or make it more palatable. It's supposed to make you uncomfortable; it's supposed to make you feel something. When things move quickly you're SUPPOSED to think "what the fuck??" and all that, yada yada.
> 
> So I chose a Meg Myers song for the recommendation, and a lyric for the chapter title. Idk, lots of her songs seem to have a sexual assault undertone to it which I can relate to. I can imagine Violet wanting to be a kid again, even though her childhood was shit, because it's better than having to deal with stuff. 
> 
> AND! It seems like I'm making this a tradition; chapter three will include a strip tease of sorts. Lmao. I'm gonna have to do that with all of my multi-chaptered fics now, aren't I?
> 
> Song recommendation: Meg Myers- Make A Shadow

_ Crinkle crinkle crinkle _

 

Distractions, distractions. I want to be anywhere but here, so I look over at Brody’s side of the room. Her nightstand is littered with pill bottles, all different names I can’t pronounce. She’s been on everything under the fucking sun and nothing touches her depression. They just add different symptoms into the mix. I remember once she was on some antipsychotic and she didn’t leave her room for weeks. She even had someone bring her food and it was usually cold by the time she got to it. I sound out the names.  _ Ris-per-i-done. Ser-tra-line. Du-lox-e-tine.  _

 

Minerva sits on Brody’s bed and I feel bad that I can’t get her off of it. Poor Brody. But honestly, I’m just glad she isn’t on mine, because that’s where I’m sitting. Her laptop rests on her lap, clicking away at the keys, and the sound just reminds me of being in an office. I hate it. And Minerva’s the last person I wanna be stuck in an office with, or in a dorm with, or anywhere with. 

 

I’m not even serving any purpose by being here because she’s doing all the work herself, but she looks at me occasionally. Glares at me. Makes this face I can’t quite describe, like she’s analyzing me. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking at her, too. She has double lobe piercings. Two little beads on each side, and I realize she hasn’t changed her earrings all year.

 

But mostly I look down at my feet, and I realize I haven’t changed my shoes all year. They’re the same converse, the laces frayed and the fabric coming apart from the sole. 

 

Minnie’s hair is always done nice, the side always freshly shaven, the unshaven side resting just at her chin. Mine falls at my chin on both sides. Hers has ginger weaving through the red and mine is just… dirty blonde, but more dirty than blonde.

 

_ Crinkle crinkle crinkle _

 

I grow anxious at the sun, high in the sky. It must be around three. I have to get going. But then Minerva’s glaring at me again and this time she doesn’t take her eyes off of me.

 

“I cut you,” Minerva states matter-of-factly.

 

I peek down at her hand, eyeing her ring. That was probably the one she was wearing. I say nothing.

 

She waits a while longer as if she expected a response, but she huffs when she doesn’t get one. “I didn’t mean to.”

 

I try to bite my tongue but it doesn’t work. “Is that your way of apologizing to me?”

 

She waits a moment. “No.”

 

I sigh.

 

“It doesn’t look that bad.” She drums her fingers on the bed beside her.

 

“I don’t care,” I say. I can’t smack her and I can’t make her leave, so I glare right back at her. It feels good even though I know it doesn’t faze her.

 

Minerva’s always dressed nicely, and even when she isn’t trying to, her lounge clothes look nice. Her sweatpants hug her form. Her shirts are never ripped or torn and the strings of her hoodies are never frayed. I don’t think I’ve seen her wearing the same outfit twice. Where does she get all the money?

 

I cycle through the same five or so outfits. I mix and match so it doesn’t seem like it, but I know full well. I wear the same vest every day. My only hoodie has frayed strings. My pants hang off my bones.

 

_ Crinkle crinkle crinkle _

 

“Why am I here?” I ask.

 

She finishes typing another sentence and looks up. “What?”

 

I groan. “What am I doing here, Minnie? You’re doing this whole project yourself anyway.”

 

“I mean, you  _ can  _ leave,” she says, resting her cheek on her closed fist.

 

“And then what are you gonna do to my room when I’m gone?”

 

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t want to touch any of your shit.”

 

I don’t believe it for a second, but I drop it. “Do you want me to do anything?”

 

“No. I can do this on my own.” She starts typing away again.

 

“Then what are you doing in my room? And I know you’re just gonna take it out on me if I don’t do my part.” I sit at the edge of the bed, the paper slip balled up in my hand.

 

“Then do your fuckin’ part, if you’re so worried,” she says, drumming her fingers again.

 

“What are you doing in my room?” I ask again.

 

Just when I think I won’t get an answer she speaks. “I’m doing my project.”

 

I roll my eyes.

 

She sets the laptop beside her, leering at me through her bangs. “Is that a problem?”

 

_ Crinkle crinkle crinkle _

 

When I stand to leave she slots herself between me and the door, her hand shooting down to push in the lock, and my heart drops to my stomach. Fuck this. Not again.

 

Calm down. She gets nothing out of this if you don’t panic. I recite the medicine names in my head again.  _ Ser-tra-line. Ris-per-i-done. _

 

She’s got that same smug grin she did in the showers, the same flared nostrils thing she does when she’s about to fuck with me, but I stand my ground. If I back up I’m not gonna have the advantage.

 

“What’s that in your hand, Violet?” She says, taking a half step from the door.

 

Then she’s wrestling me for my hand, and I shriek, balling up the paper I’ve been crinkling in my fist, but she pries my hand open like a clam and retrieves the paper, holding it out of my reach despite me making no effort to get it back.

 

And she reads off of it with theatrical exaggeration. “Vi. Meet me at the field at three. Clem.  _ Heart, _ ” she says, annunciating the  _ t.  _

 

Her mouth falls open. She starts to roar with laughter but chokes it down. “No fuckin’ way.”

 

I cross my arms, not expecting to get the paper back. “What?”

 

She plasters the same grin to her face again. “The dyke has a girlfriend.”

 

I fight every urge I have not to harm her somehow. “She’s not my girlfriend. I barely even know her,” I say.

 

Minerva just kicks back, leaning against the door. “And it’s  _ Clementine. _ ”

 

“Are you deaf? I said she’s not my fucking girlfriend.” She lowers her hand and I take the opportunity to snatch the paper from her.

 

“What? Is she your knight in shining armor, then?” She crosses her arms.

 

I eye the door handle for a moment, and then I shoot my gaze back up to Minerva. “What?”

 

Her tongue darts out to lick her lips. “You gonna get her to beat me up because you can’t?”

 

Fight or flight kicks in for a moment. “What makes you think I can’t?”

 

Her expression shifts. She grits her teeth. “Do it, then,” she says through a clenched jaw. “Fucking do it.”

 

“You  _ want  _ me to beat you up?”

 

She raises her voice and I almost shiver. She doesn’t usually get this loud. “If you think you can take me, do it. You’ll fucking regret it. But do it, Violet. Break my nose. Make me bleed.” She looks like she’s anticipating something for a second, but then her grin creeps back up her face.

 

“What? No. I’m not gonna beat you up.” I wanna look at anything but her face, so I read my note again, tracing my finger around the purple heart at the bottom.

 

I can’t help but look back up at her when she starts speaking again. Her eyes narrow. “Suit yourself.”

 

Minerva is solid. She packs a punch. She’s strong. Unrelenting and determined and headstrong. She towers over me and can fuck with my head without even laying a finger on me.

 

I’m weak. I’m small. My bones are paper and I don’t dare touch her because I’m well aware she could, and would, beat me till I don’t wake up. Just to have control.

 

And she says it herself. “Violet.”

 

I don’t break my gaze.

 

She uncrosses her arms, wrapping one hand around the door handle as though I’m gonna try and get past her. “You tell anyone what happened in the locker room and I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

 

I fight tears thinking of what happened again. “Why do you do it, Minnie?”

 

“What?” There’s something in her eyes. Her eyebrows quirk up. Fear? Can’t be.

 

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” I shove the paper deep into my pocket. “Why?”

 

She looks at me like she knows her answer but doesn’t want to tell me. Her entire expression drops and for a moment she’s off in another land, but then she picks it back up like she always does. Grinning. “Because I can.”

 

I eye the door handle again. I’m gonna be late. Is she gonna pull something again or is she gonna let me leave? “That’s it?”

 

She rolls her eyes. “Not everything is all about  _ you,  _ Violet.”

 

“So are you gonna waste any more of my time or are you gonna let me leave?” I try to keep my voice from shaking. This shouldn’t be scaring me as much as it is.

 

She takes her hand off the handle and I think she’s gonna let me go, but she takes it up to my face and grabs it. Squeezing. Stand your ground. Don’t move.

 

She speaks to me just how she did in the locker room. “Don’t forget what I said.” And she has that look in her eyes. Like fear, but… not. I can’t think of a better word for it. Worry? Anticipation?

 

And then she lets me go, not bothering to unlock the door; just slides back from in front of me and slinks back over to Brody’s bed like nothing ever happened. Clicking away at the keyboard like she got what she wanted and she’s all good now, and I just stand here trying to process everything.

 

I unlock the door and bound down the hallway, by chance peering into someone’s room and catching a glimpse at their clock.  _ Fuck.  _ It’s already three-fifteen, and it’s still gonna take me time to get to the field. I hope she’s not waiting for me.

 

I almost run into someone as I throw the stairwell doors open, wiping my face on my sleeve. I haven’t gotten the opportunity to clean up and I hate that she’s gonna see me this way, but not showing up would be worse. The person looks aghast and then I remember I have a considerable cut on my face and I’m rushing somewhere. It must seem like I did something.

 

But I push past them, my heart pounding so fast I stop at the bottom of the stairwell, bracing myself to catch my breath. I look at my reflection in the glass of the door and hide as much of my face behind my overgrown bangs as I can. At least I’m not breaking out. I dig the note out of my pocket again and uncrumble it, just to make sure I didn’t read something wrong.

 

Then I get a surge of paranoia as I’m taking the shortcut to the field. Is this note even from her? Is this just some ploy that people set up to draw me out to the field and fuck with me? A purple heart? Does she like me enough to draw a purple heart? Does she like me enough to invite me to her practice?

 

So I slow down my pace, checking the perimeter before I make my debut. I peer out of the thickets and if anyone sees me, it’s probably quite the sight. But it’s not like I haven’t been here before. And I see plenty of people out there, practicing as expected, so I figure either Clementine really did invite me or these girls are doing a really good job looking busy.

 

And then I see her, and hear her; the windup. The grunt as the ball leaves her hands. The crack of the ball on the bat. My heart is in my throat. I’m really doing this? I’m really about to go see Clementine Everett practice baseball? I’d better not fucking blow it. I’ve already gotten off to a bad start with her.

 

I worm my way out of the overgrown grass and stand there second guessing myself for a moment before someone spots me and it’d be awkward to leave now. I make my way over to the bleachers and I’m a fish out of water. Nobody is watching except for me. I’m not exactly sure what to do and I panic. Is everyone gonna know I came here to see Clementine? I mean, clearly I’m here to see someone, and the team is entirely girls anyway. 

 

I settle on pressing out the note on the bleachers beside me, trying to get the creases to flatten out, and then I study Clementine’s handwriting. It’s… carefree, yet neat. Nothing looks controlled or intentional but it somehow seems artistic.

 

My mouth is dry and it’s hard to breathe. Every time I try to control my breathing it seems my breathing starts to control me. I try focusing on the crack of the bat in the background, because I know I’m gonna flip my shit if I look at Clementine.

 

_ Crack _

 

How am I gonna keep my sexuality a secret? If Clementine ever showers at the same time as Minerva and me she’s gonna know. Minerva wastes no opportunity to ruin my day. And then what the fuck do I do? Even aside from that, I feel like my gayness drips from every pore. I dress like a boy or, I guess, like a lesbian. I show no interest in boys (or anyone.) And can people just… tell? Is there a way they’d know even if I showed no ‘signs?’

 

As much as I don’t want to be outed any more than I already have, I’m not comfortable pretending I’m into guys. I’d rather keep my truth a secret than make my lies public. Jesus, that sounds like I’m trying to be deep. But I know even if I were to pretend, everyone would know. I could never kiss a guy like I’d kiss a girl.

 

_ Crack _

 

So secret spy Vi it is. Everything must have a reason. Why aren’t I into dudes? Well, of course it’s because I’m too preoccupied to have a boyfriend. Why do I dress like a boy? It’s more comfortable that way. Why does Minerva bully me for being gay if I’m not gay? Well, because… Um.

 

I suppose I’ll keep the bullying a secret from Clementine for as long as I can. She doesn’t shower with Minerva and she probably doesn’t talk to anybody who talks to her because Clementine doesn’t like Minerva, either. But why not? If not for being gay, what does Minerva bully Clementine about? Or maybe she doesn’t bully Clementine. Maybe Clementine just doesn’t like Minnie for her own reasons.

 

_ Crack _

 

What if Clementine really is gay, though? What if I blow every chance I have with her by pretending I’m not gay? What if she sees right past my charade and calls me out? Then what do I do? Say ‘yeah, I’m gay; I’ve been lying this whole time’? And that assumes Clementine would even like me in the first place. Her being gay would only be the first qualifier.

 

Then she has to actually like me. Then she has to  _ continue  _ to like me. And who likes a girl with no personality, no ambitions, no manners, sometimes lacking personal hygiene, has no friends…

 

_ Bang! _

 

“Fuck!” I yell, noticing the loud noise was just the ball Clementine threw, way past the batter.

 

“Hey! Violet!” She says, grabbing the ball on the way over, smiling and waving with it in her hand. 

 

“Hey,” I answer, forcing myself to smile. “Um. Sorry, that ball sorta startled me.”

 

Her smile beams even brighter yet. “That was the point!”

 

“Huh?” I trace the creases on the note, looking at it and looking at her in limbo.

 

“You seemed distracted.” She tosses the ball behind her. It lands in the general vicinity of the field.

 

_ Yeah, _ I think.  _ I was thinking of you. _

 

She plops down next to me. The team already substituted a pitcher. “I guess I was,” I say.

 

She faces me, either forearm resting on either thigh. Her posture exudes confidence, even in her relaxed state. I feel like a stark contrast to her. “I thought you weren’t gonna show. Was starting to get kinda sad.”

 

_ Sad? _

 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be late. Minerva was in my room.”  I wince thinking of her.

 

Clementine’s smile fades. “What was she doing in there? Was she picking fights with you again?”

 

I sigh. “Not exactly. We have to do our final project together. She’s actually still in there,” I think out loud.

 

Clementine just rests her face in her hands. 

 

“I know, I know,” I say. “She’s literally the worst partner anyone could’ve chosen for me.”

 

“No kidding,” Clementine says, now resting her chin on her closed fist. 

 

I don’t try to, but I find a smile forcing its way onto my face. Clementine catches this and smiles back. “At least you’re here now,” she says.

 

“Yeah,” I say. “So why’d you invite me here?”

 

Clementine loses her train of thought for a second and then says, with quirked eyebrows, “I just have a good feeling about you, Violet.”

 

“Really?” Jesus, Violet. Don’t sound  _ so  _ surprised.

 

“Really,” she affirms. “I feel like we could be really, really good friends.” She clasps her hands together in front of her chest. I must look like I just saw someone die because her expression drops and she panics. “I’m sorry. Was that too forward?”

 

“No! No, not at all. I’m just… not used to it, I guess.”

 

“Okay, good. Last thing I wanna do is freak you out.” She tucks a stray curl of hair under her baseball cap. “Although…”

 

“Uh oh,” I say, anticipating something bad.

 

“What happened to your bandaids?” She asks, pointing to my cheek.

 

My mind flickers back to my freak out last night and I decide to omit literally everything. “It was uncomfortable. The bandaids.”

 

She frowns. “It’s gonna get infected.” She scoots just an inch closer to me and my personal bubble feels nonexistent. Somehow she’s just so…  _ her  _ that it doesn’t bother me enough to scoot away.

 

“I don’t care if it gets infected,” I say.

 

“Whoa, is this yesterday again?” She asks. “Don’t come cryin’ to me when your face falls off,” she says, giggling.

 

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I say, tucking my head down. Trying to get as much hair to cover my face as possible.

 

When we don’t have anything to talk about, I have all too much time to look at her face. She’s summer- the brown of her eyes- warm. The brown of her hair, also warm, the curls so controlled yet playful. Like her handwriting. Her skin, like she hasn’t missed a day of sunshine. The whole of her is just so warm, like she’s a sunbeam and I could lie inside her for hours, when she looks away I wonder what she’s thinking about, when she parts her lips to lick them I wonder what she tastes like-

 

“So. Anyway,” She says, glancing to see if anyone’s around before her gaze falls back on mine. “The million dollar question.”

 

Please, please,  _ please _ don’t ask if I’m gay. I take a deep breath.

 

She speaks as I exhale. “What’re you here for?” A smile tugs at the corner of her lip, like getting an answer wouldn’t scare her. “It’s like jail. Murder, robbery, arson- what brings you to this shithole?”

 

“My answer is gonna make as little sense to you as it does to me.” 

 

She shakes her head. “Same here. So shoot.”

 

I look anywhere but her face. My eyes find themselves in my lap. “Grandma killed herself in front of me and I didn’t do anything. I was eleven.”

 

“Well, you were so young; you were probably fucking traumatized. Anyone would be.” She says it like it doesn’t scare her, too. Like I’m the only part of the equation she cares about.

 

This is the point where she stops liking me. “I’m not sure I was.” When I say it, my tongue feels too big for my mouth.

 

But she just nods. “Understandable.”

 

We wait in comfortable silence for awhile before she pipes up. “Aren’t you gonna ask me what I’m here for?”

 

God, I suck at conversation. “Only if you’re okay with sharing, of course.”

 

Her voice is uncharacteristically gleeful for the conversation matter. “I am okay! And! It’s because dad’s in prison!” She shoots finger guns at me to annunciate.

 

I can’t help but laugh. “Why are you glad he’s in prison?” I hide my face in my hands. I don’t want her to see me blushing.

 

She doesn’t stop smiling. “Oh, I’m not glad. It’s destroying my life. This is just a defense mechanism. Ha-ha, boarding school is great and all, everything’s cool. Whatever.”

 

I can’t help but notice how different we are. How she’s able to use humor as a coping mechanism and my coping mechanism is losing my fucking mind. I wonder how she’d react to how I crawled out of my own skin last night. I wonder, if I tried using humor to cope with my situation, would she even find it as funny as I find her?

 

“And, before you ask, because I’m sure you’re dying to know; he’s in prison because he killed someone.” 

 

I can see the pain behind her smile. “That sounds horrible. I’m so sorry.” I scold myself. That’s all you can say, Violet?  _ You’re sorry? _ Bet that makes her feel better.

 

But it seemingly does. She picks her smile back up. “Yeah, it sucks, but I can’t really do anything about it, anyway.”

 

A question forces its way into my head. “How old are you? My age, since you’re a senior?”

 

“If you’re eighteen, yeah,” she says, resting her head on her fist again.

 

“I’m eighteen too,” I say.

 

“Why do you ask?”

 

“Because you can leave if you’re eighteen,” I say. “Why don’t you?”

 

She beams. “Why don’t  _ you? _ ” She asks, but she answers first. “A lot of reasons. One, I can never get a job if I don’t graduate.” She uses her fingers to count. “Two, I play baseball here, and I got recruited to a college, and three, I have nowhere to go.”

 

Three piques my interest. “Oh.”

 

“And you?” She asks.

 

“What?”

 

“What keeps you here?” She’s not nearly as excited anymore, maybe because she expects a sad answer.

 

And a sad answer is what I provide. “Dad beats me. At home. Mom doesn’t do shit about it.”

 

“Oh.” She looks like she’s in pain. “I don’t understand how any parent can beat their own child.”

 

“A lot of reasons,” I say. “One, he didn’t  _ want  _ me.” I count on my fingers, like her. “Two, he doesn’t  _ like  _ me. Three, he’s a drunk.” I’m reminded of the stench of alcohol, strong in the close quarters of the trailer.

 

“I don’t get how anyone could think of you as anything other than a blessing,” she says.

 

Her compliment makes me uncomfortable for some reason, so I try to think of reasons my dad hates me other than  _ because I’m a dyke. _ But I can’t. “I’m not that special,” I say, looking toward the field, all the girls still practicing.

 

But she doesn’t say anything so I end up looking back at her to make sure she’s okay, and she speaks quietly so that only I can hear. “I disagree.”

 

A small “oh” is all I can muster. My head is spinning with commands. Don’t give her a reason to hate you, Violet. If you want people to like you, you can’t push them away,  _ Violet. _ If she wants to like you, then let her,  _ Violet. _

 

“Um. I know it’s a sore subject, but,” I start, and then I trail off.  _ Bad idea, Violet. _

 

“What?” I shake my head no, but Clementine just smiles. “No questions are off limits.”

 

I swallow. “Why don’t you like changing with the other girls in the locker room?”

 

Clementine swishes imaginary water in her mouth. “It’s less of me not liking changing with them and more of them not liking changing with  _ me, _ ” she says.

 

“Why don’t they like changing with you?”

 

She looks like she wants to say something but she settles for shrugging. “Dunno. Why don’t you?” She asks, and her eyes are eager.

 

“I guess it just makes me uncomfortable. And Minerva.”

 

Clementine rolls her eyes at my mention of Minnie. “Fuck her, seriously.”

 

“Why do  _ you  _ hate her so much?” I clutch the paper in my hands as though it’s a bug or a frog and it’s trying to get away.

 

“Well, a lot of reasons,” she says, and we both giggle. “One, fuck her and her red hair and tallness and her… ugh.”

 

“Agreed,” I say.

 

She continues. “Two, she picks on me, too. Which is not to say that I have it worse than you or that either of us have it worse than anybody or anything,” she says, kind of getting lost. “But it sucks. Bad.” She looks downtrodden for a moment, and then cheers up. “Three, she picks on you.”

 

“She’s not that bad to me,” I lie. Despite what Clementine said to me, I know the only way she could make it worse is by killing me. I’m not even too sure I’m  _ against  _ her killing me. Ugh. Okay, cool it, edgelord. 

 

“She made you bleed, Vi,” she says.

 

Usually I hate when people nickname me, but the way Clementine says it- draws out the ‘i’- is so sing songy that I wanna hear it again. “She didn’t mean to.”

 

“But did she care that she did?”

 

All I can do is shake my head no.

 

Clementine is empathetic. Benevolent. When she connects with me I know she’s not just saying the things she says to get good person points. She means it. The way I’m treated genuinely hurts her. Maybe because it’s me, and she particularly likes me, and maybe because she just sees me as a human being who deserves respect. It makes me wonder when she’s not gonna mean it anymore; what the thing that makes her stop caring is. Maybe I’ll get so down in a hole that she’d have to dig too much to pull me out. Maybe it’ll have to do with my sexuality. Maybe she just won’t find me interesting anymore. 

 

I feel like I have a special talent with that. I could take the most caring, kind person and make them hate me. Not that it’s happened before, really, but I know I could do it. What if I called her for support every time I got upset? What if I made it known whenever some barely noticeable thing she does upsets me? ‘Hey, you responded with two hearts instead of three, do you hate me?’ 

 

But I try to just take this while I can get it. Before she sees how I get and wants nothing to do with me anymore. It’s nice to have someone care about me; to check up on me and invite me places. If I have no other reason to live, this is it. If only self-love felt as good as someone else loving me. Maybe I’d do it.

 

Clementine shakes me out of my spiral of self hatred. “So, what are you gonna do this weekend?”

 

Is she asking me if I have plans? “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean, this weekend they’re having us do that stupid thing where we go home with our parents or wherever we live to ‘get used to it,’” she says, using her fingers like quotation marks. “Where are you going?”

 

Oh, yeah. Fuck. “Home, I guess.” If you can even call a trailer a home.

 

“I wish you weren’t.” She scratches under her hat. “Going home, I mean. With your shitty parents.”

 

“I wish I wasn’t, too, but I have nowhere else.” I crinkle the paper again. “What about you?”

 

“I’m going to Louis’s place. You know him?” She asks, and my world stops spinning.

 

“Yeah, I do.”  _ Don’tdoitdon’tdoitdon’tdoit  _ “Is he your boyfriend or just your friend?”  _ FUCK!  _

 

“Oh, no, he’s not my boyfriend,” she says, and my world resumes its rotation. “I just don’t feel that way for him, you know? He’s cute and all, but he’s more like a brother.”

 

No ‘no way, I’m lesbian,’ or even a ‘nah, I’m not really into guys’? She’s probably straight. Fuck. The way she said it makes it seem like she could be into guys.

 

“Yeah, I get it,” I lie. Not only am I not into guys, but I don’t have any friends close enough for me to think of them as a sibling. “Do you have a boyfriend at all?”

 

She shakes her head. “No. I don’t think I could date anyone from here. Everyone’s so fucked up,” she says. “And, I mean, so am I. But I can’t even handle my own fucked-up-ness, so I don’t know how to begin to handle someone else’s.”

 

That probably means she could never be into me. The longer I talk to her the more I feel I don’t have a chance, as if I even had one to begin with. “You can’t be  _ that _ fucked up,” I say.

 

“Nah. But still,” she says. “What about you?”

 

“Do I look like I have a boyfriend?” I ask, gesturing to my body. Wow. I don’t want her to think I’m a lesbian and I pull  _ that? _

 

She just smiles, shaking her head. 

 

And we talk. And talk. And talk. I never knew I could talk so much and here I am blabbering, and it’s actually nice. She laughs, even when I’m not trying to be funny. When I tell stories her eyes don’t stray from mine, as though she’s soaking in every word. We get personal even this soon in our relationship. Friendship? We talk about all the deep shit that plagues our minds and there’s no discomfort, at least on my end. I feel like an open book. I feel like I’m talking to myself, in a good way.

 

We talk about everything. Growing up. Being sent here. The people we hate- and I feel like a normal kid, in a normal school, with normal feelings- if only for a few hours. By now all the baseball players have already trickled back to their dorms or wherever else they go and the only two people here are us, sitting on the bleachers, entertained by each other. If we wait any longer there’s not gonna be enough light in the sky to guide us back.

 

I don’t have very many good memories of summer, but I feel like I’m making one. We lie across the bleachers and I look up at the moon; breathe in, before I close my eyes, still able to see the light it’s burned into my retinas. I trace the sounds the crickets make back to their sources. I let the coolness of the metal bleachers sink into my skin. A comfortable silence falls upon us for a few moments and I allow myself to think.

 

What if everything was as I wanted? What if I shifted to get on top of Clementine and she didn’t push me off, or call me gross, or think I was joking, or do anything other than accept me? And I’d kiss her till the sun sets. Taste her lips. Pull her closer. Not worry where I was gonna end up this weekend, or where I will end up when the school year is over, or where I’m gonna be in five years or however long I manage to live. 

 

She wouldn’t care why I’m here at boarding school or why Minerva hits me or what I do at night when I’m lonely. We’d just kiss and exist and live in every moment as though we were the only two people to walk the earth. As though the culmination of all our suffering and all the bullshit we experience and all the situations we fight tooth and nail to get out of are all absolved by the peace we’ve found within each other.

 

“Hey, Violet.” Her voice is small, like she’s just woken up.

 

“Yeah?” I say, my voice equally as quiet.

 

“We should go.”

 

“Don’t wanna,” I say, my hands still clutching the note to my chest.

 

“It’s dark now.” She sits up and tilts her head to each side, cracking her neck.

 

I sit up as well. “Yeah.”

 

Her eyes trace the path back to the school, the school itself lit up like a Christmas tree. Then she stands up, expecting, and I stand up, too. And suddenly her hand brushes mine, and I think it’s a mistake so I retract, but she just extends her arm back out and takes my hand, squeezing once. “I’ll guide you back. I’ve taken this path so many times,” she says. 

 

I want to ask her if she is aware she’s holding my hand, even though there’s no way she doesn’t know. I want to say ‘actually, I know my way back, too,’ and save her from the awkwardness of holding my sweaty, nervous hand, but then she threads her fingers within mine and it’s like my hand is stuck there.

 

And then she starts walking the path and the only noise is my shoes and her cleats rustling through the grass. The structure of my world changes. I wonder what I must’ve done to make this girl comfortable enough with me to hold my hand. Everything feels different; like it has life in it again. Like the school doesn’t absolutely suck and I don’t feel so horrible being here.

 

Like I’m high. And then I realize, halfway back, that I’m breathing like I just ran a marathon and my heart is beating just the same. I remind myself that she’s not holding my hand because she likes me, she’s holding it because she thinks she’s helping me. But I pretend for the rest of the walk that she  _ does _ like me. That I’m not too shy to say to her, ‘hey, I think we have chemistry.’ I allow myself to think there’s a chance she might be gay and, a much smaller chance, but still a chance, that she might like me.

 

We make it inside the building and she doesn’t stop holding my hand. “Uh, Clementine,” I say, holding our intertwined hands up.

 

But she just smiles, squeezing me again as if to say ‘I know, you doofus,’ and then her grin widens. Then she’s running with my hand in hers and she’s pulling me up the stairs and we’re both laughing and I almost trip but I catch myself and we’re just laughing harder and bursting through the next set of doors, sprinting up the next set of stairs, giggling our next set of giggles. We must look like little girls, playing with each other like this, I think as she throws the next set of doors open and we make it to the dorms.

 

We slow down to walk through here, but she still doesn’t stop holding my hand. We’re still laughing and people open their doors to see the commotion as we pass. What does it look like? Does it seem like we’re a couple or something? I worry for a split second and then I don’t care because I’m giggling again and we reach my door.

 

And I almost fall into her. I almost face her and grab her, but I stop myself. I don’t let myself kiss her, even though nobody’s watching, even though we’re both smiling at each other, even though I look down at her lips for a second, even though she scans over my face and lets go of my hand to wipe my bangs away.

 

Even though I want to. Even though I could. Even though I’m gonna get beat up for being a dyke, anyway, so what’s one more? What’s one more broken relationship, what’s one more ruined opportunity, what’s one more to the list of people who think I’m fucking disgusting?

 

Her smile fades as she catches her breath. “Violet.”

 

“Clementine?”

 

She takes one more deep breath. “Tomorrow. The showers. I’ll change with you,” she says.

 

Did I hear that right? Am I hearing things because I want my lips on this girl right now? “What?”

 

She heaves again, clearly too worked up to be talking as much as she is. “Tomorrow. After Minnie and them leave. I’ll shower with you, so you don’t have to do it alone.”

 

Don’t read into this, Violet. Just because she’s nice doesn’t mean she wants to be inside of you. “Okay,” I stutter.

 

“Unless you don’t want to.”

 

“No, no, nonono,” I say, much too enthusiastic. “I totally do. Thanks. That sounds… yeah. I’ll see you then.”

 

She turns to face me and looks me over again. Smiles. “Great.” Then she shoots finger guns at me and bounds down the hall as though she weren’t just heaving for breath two seconds ago.

 

Once she enters her dorm, I open my door, eyeing Brody passed out on her bed again, stomach down, facing the wall. Her side of the room appears to be unscathed, and that quells my pounding heart for a moment. Her pills are all still there on the nightstand. Nothing’s missing. Home sweet home and all. I click the door closed behind me, stepping inside.

 

And then my side of the room. Not nearly as messy as it was when I left it this afternoon, and it’s like someone punched me in the gut. Fuck. Everything’s organized. And I know I don’t have many things to begin with, but that just makes me panic more. I can trace back where everything was and where it is now. It looks like a model room.

 

When I’m close enough to see my bed, I see my journal placed neatly in the center of it, opened up to a specific page. I step closer. Closer, closer, closer, as though the journal is gonna fly away if I startle it, and then I see it.

 

“Minerva was here XOXO” written across a line like an entry.

 

I grasp the journal and lie down on my bed, my eyes scrunched closed, facing the ceiling. How could I have been so stupid? Of course Minerva would do this. I can just imagine her smug fucking face as she soaks up every word, planning how she’s gonna fuck with me next time.

 

It’s not like she doesn’t know, though. It’s not like she’s unaware I’m gay. I mean, clearly. If anything it’s just another confirmation. Why should I care if she knows what I think? She already knows I hate her, too. And I think again. What’s one more? What’s one more beating, what’s one more non-consensual fingering, what’s one more ring-laden slap across the face? If I can just… keep my head above water until the end of the year, I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.

 

But I know I won’t be fine. I tuck the note into the last page of my journal, tossing it to the floor, bringing my hands up over my face and I think  _ Violet, you’re gonna get dirt and grease all over your face and you’re gonna break out,  _ but I don’t care. So be it.

 

Because the end of the year is gonna come and I’m not gonna be fine. I’m not gonna have anywhere nice to go and Clementine’s gonna leave. This girl I’ve had a crush on for two fucking days, but fuck, if it doesn’t feel fucking good. If it doesn’t ignite the last spark of positive emotion I have left in me. If I’m not gonna cling to this relationship for dear life, as though it’s all I have left; as though I’ll die without it.

 

I’m not gonna be fine and I’m not gonna have anybody. Do I even ‘have’ her? Am I gonna enter the showers tomorrow to find myself alone with Minerva again and Clementine’s just off doing whatever Clementine does, because it was stupid of me to think she cares as much about being around each other as I do?

 

I think about her again, my eyes still closed. I’ve never seen her not wearing that baseball cap, I don’t think. I imagine all her curls spilling out of it as she takes it off; untamed. Her eyes open wide and bright, like they were so many times earlier today. I breathe in. I breathe out. Her nose, which has no right to be so small and cute, all her little barely-there freckles spattered around it.

 

Then Brody turns her head, facing me, and I mimic her, lying on my stomach, facing her as well. My arms pinned under me. I imagine Brody is Clementine. All of Brody’s reddish hair turns brown, and I shiver when my imagination doesn’t turn her hair into pigtails; her hair’s just out, falling at her shoulders. Brody’s hair. Clementine’s hair. And I realize I’m gonna get to see it tomorrow.

 

I realize I’m gonna think of this when I see her. I imagine Brody’s eyelashes two times thicker and two times longer, her skin brown instead of white. Her shoulders more slender and feminine. Clementine’s breasts, just big enough for me to be jealous of them. I don’t even have to imagine her clothes off.

 

I just shift my hips back enough for me to be able to reach my belt and I undo it. Don’t even take it off. I don’t take off my pants; I just unbutton them. The only thing I take off is my vest, slinging it to the floor. I see Brody’s eyes peacefully closed, her lips parted in her sleep. Clementine’s lips. Her eyes closed, anticipating me kissing her.

 

I imagine our lips pressing together as my hand sneaks past my waistband, hoping to God that Brody doesn’t wake up. I remember how soft Clementine’s hand felt in mine just moments ago, and I imagine that same hand is mine, threading through all my hair. As we kiss. I see Brody and think of Clementine, her eyes closed in concentration as my fingers make contact. I hiss.

 

“Fuck,” I whisper.

 

And then I imagine her, unflinching, calm and at ease. “Shhh. Shhh, shhh, it’s okay.” 

 

She would have a softness Minerva could never have. And, if she were doing this, I wouldn’t even be thinking of Minerva at all. I would only be thinking of how her hand feels as I start to rut against it; how she quiets me with her kisses.

 

I would only be thinking about how her hair feels, weaving through my fingers, as I pull her closer. And I wouldn’t only be kissing her; she’d be kissing me back. She’d be sliding her tongue against mine and I’d be tasting her and I’d whimper. I’d be listening to the sounds our kissing makes. I’d be listening to the sounds my wetness makes as she slips inside of me.

 

I wouldn’t be thinking of how Minerva felt. I wouldn’t be thinking of how she read in my journal that I touch myself to girls, or that I touch myself at all. Because, fuck, I don’t wanna have these thoughts. I don’t wanna do this, I don’t wanna have my fingers buried inside myself right now; I don’t want Clementine to be Brody, feet across from me.

 

I want it to be Clementine’s fingers curling inside of me. I want to be moaning to Clementine. I want my body to be pressed somehow up against hers, I want to hear the sound of  _ her  _ breathing, I want to smell  _ her  _ perfume. I want  _ her  _ to find me alone in the showers. I want  _ her  _ lips centimeters from mine. 

 

What if that happens tomorrow? What if I walk in there and she kisses me? What if that’s why she wants me there alone? What if we just gradually get closer to one another until we’re touching and we don’t even have to say anything; we just start doing whatever our bodies will us to do?

 

“Clem-” I say, practically drawing my orgasm out of me. I feel how lovely her name is on my lips, wondering all the instances I’ll have the pleasure of saying it. And then I start to cry.

 

I rip my belt out of the loops and wipe my fingers on my shirt because I’m gonna have to wash it before I wear it next, anyway. I start buttoning my pants back up, sniffling, not even completely ‘come down’ yet before I go scavenging for wherever Minerva put my laptop.

 

I stumble back over to my bed and prop myself against my pillows, thankful it’s too dark to see my reflection in the computer screen before the thing boots up and I open Google. I shake my head as I type in what I wanna type and see I’ve already searched for this before. How many times? How many times have I slipped this fucking far?

 

_ Sertraline overdose _

 

_ Duloxetine overdose _

 

_ Risperidone overdose _

 

I read over the symptoms even though I already know what it does. I already know it sucks too bad to take any chances. I already know this makes me cry harder whenever I see it because I realize how fucking hard it is to actually die; how hard it is both to keep living and to do anything severe enough to kill myself.

 

Maybe it would only take thirty minutes. Maybe it would take as much as a few days. Maybe I’d be at peace, not really caring about all the weird things my body is doing, maybe nobody would notice I’ve been acting strange, maybe Brody wouldn’t notice all her pills are gone, maybe I wouldn’t panic and get myself help immediately; maybe it wouldn’t be nearly as bad as everyone makes it seem. Dying.

 

And I remember just a few minutes ago I was holding a girl’s hand and laughing, practically skipping down the hallway, and I’ve already dug myself this deep. Why? Why can’t I enjoy anything  _ good  _ for more than ten minutes before I panic again?

 

So I throw my laptop on the ground on top of the journal and just close my eyes, breathing. In. Out. Feeling the sting of my tears rolling over the cut on my face. In. Out. Feeling the room fall back into place; not so dizzy. In. Out. Remembering that I can start my day new tomorrow and nobody has to know what I just did. In. Out. Remembering how Clementine’s hand feels in mine.

 

How many more days do I get this? I can’t die before I’ve even had the chance to see what happens with this girl. Before I get to spend time with her in the morning, which will maybe turn into every morning, which will maybe turn into every day. If even for a week; if even for half a month, or if even for just one day. 

 

I can just pretend this gets to last, if anything. 

 

Pretend I haven’t been crying. Pretend I’m not gay so this’ll last.

 

Pretend that I get to hold her hand again tomorrow.

 

Pretend that I’ll get good sleep tonight.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp.
> 
> Thank you for your continued support <3


	3. That's Not All You're Running From

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And then I’m feeling her heartbeat. Feeling the warmth from her chest and feeling it rise and fall as she breathes. I’m looking at her face, her eyes still on mine. I’m looking at her lips as she forces a smile. I’m looking at her lips as she licks a tear from them. I’m looking at her lips as her face relaxes and I’m looking at her lips as she looks at mine."
> 
> Clem and Violet get closer and spend time together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK YO! WOOP!  
> I'm a dumbass, I specifically told one of you that I'm aiming to upload every other night AT LEAST and here I am like a month late wtf??  
> Well that's because I got a new job :D and I've had shit going on just in general. I've caught up with old friends, and been hanging out with them and it's wild how much some people don't change and how much some people do. 
> 
> So! some notes on this chapter, as per usual: I thought Violet was too passive so far and decided she needed to take initiative in some situations. You'll hopefully understand which situations I'm referring to when you read the chapter.  
> I tried making this less angsty as well. There will be angst as that's what this fic is.. well... about, but I thought I could tone it down and let these girls spend some quality time together.
> 
> I took inspiration from a couple of songs as I usually do. The first is Sales - jamz. Specifically the feel of it arrangement-wise; I feel like this song could be played at the shower scene if this were a movie or show or w/e. Also the lyrics, "feeling like that's not all your running from," hence the chapter name. Because the story is told from Violet's POV, she can tell this story in a biased manner. She might tell herself (and the reader) she doesn't want to tell Clem she likes her because Clem might not return her feelings, but it's much more than that. She could lose Clem and have nobody and be back to dealing with all her problems by herself again. So she tells herself she's running from the possibility of rejection, but it's definitely more because of the possibility of abandonment, which is much deeper IMO.
> 
> Then another song, Bitch - Allie X. I know, I know. Why that? Well, I'm reminded of the part of Breaking Bad where Jesse says "I made you my bitch!" Have you ever been someone's bitch? Has your mood ever been dependent on them and how they interact with you? Have you ever been so madly in love with and enamored by someone that you'd stop at nothing just to be accepted by them? And you'd tell yourself "I'm never gonna be dependent on someone, I'm never gonna sacrifice any part of myself to please someone," but they made you their bitch, somehow, some way, and you'd give up everything just to be with them. Luckily Violet isn't that... codependent, but to a softer degree her and Clementine just share this sort of... connection. They just work! "I'm your bitch, you're my bitch, boom boom."
> 
> So, song recommendations:
> 
> Allie X - Bitch  
> SALES - jamz

I press my back to the wall outside the locker room, watching as all of the girls file out. I notice their hair; some long, some short, some soaking the backs of their shirts, some pulled up into wet ponytails or buns. Brody, Ruby, Sophie…

 

Minerva. Her hair’s not even wet. What was she doing in there? Hanging out? She walks with the rest of her friends, luckily not noticing me beside the door.

 

I clutch all my things to my chest, and somehow it helps my anxiety to have something there. I press my head to the bricks and breathe, closing my eyes. It’s odd being here after last night; it seemed as though last night would never end, as many nights do.

 

Then, once everyone’s filed out, I skirt my way through the doors and check to see who’s around. As usual, it’s all just disheveled lockers and stuff spilling out of them. Not usual; peace and quiet. I find myself hating it for once, because nobody’s here.

 

I shove my change of clothes into an empty locker and, out of instinct, stand facing it for a moment, taking a deep breath before I turn around. I don’t open my eyes until I know I won’t jump at whatever I see, but when I open them nobody’s there.

 

What even happened last time I was here? What am I supposed to expect coming back? It’s like a polarity; once I’m here and get assaulted and again I’m here and I get to be around a girl I like. I can’t help but attach anxiety to this place, no matter where the anxiety’s from.

 

I can’t tell if I’m anxious because I can’t stop thinking about what happened or because I can’t stop thinking about Clementine. Or maybe because I can’t stop thinking about both. I can’t imagine Clem would do the same thing Minnie did if she knew I’m gay, but I can’t imagine she’d be happy either. She just seems to have it all figured out for herself in a way I never could. She’s not here because she fucked up somehow, she’s playing for the baseball team, she’s gonna be playing for a college; she has shit going for her. 

 

That’s not to say I don’t have shit going for myself. If I actually tried, I’d get good grades. I can sing decently, I can make art; I’m not useless. I guess sometimes it’s just easier to stay miserable than to work toward doing better. Would I even feel better if I were going to college, though? Would anything make me feel better other than… myself? Not caring about things I care so much about? Actually doing something when people try to hurt me?

 

But anyway, she just doesn’t seem like the type of girl who could be gay. How can the stress of that weigh on your shoulders and you still manage to scrape by? If Minerva were doing the same thing to her that she does to me, I don’t know how it wouldn’t absolutely destroy her. Maybe I’m right or maybe I’m just weaker than I thought.

 

The door creaks open and my first instinct is to whip my head to the side and watch as she walks in, but I don’t. I stand straight and tall, as though I were about to do something, and then she’s standing in front of me with her same sunbeam-y grin she always has. I stare dead at her, my mouth hanging open.

 

She mimics my expression. “Why are you making that face?”

 

I widen my eyes. “What face?”

 

“The one I’m doing.” She scrunches her eyebrows together even stronger than before. “This one.”

 

I take my hand to the top of my head and measure our heights. Can it be? “I’m just kind of mind-blown right now.”

 

“Why?” She asks, unable to keep up her expression.

 

“You’re shorter than me.” I measure again, just to be sure.

 

“Yep!”

 

“You knew?” I ask, measuring again, just to be  _ sure _ sure.

 

“When you’re not slouching, you’re, like, an entire inch taller than me,” She says, crossing her arms.

 

“A whole fuckin’ inch, huh?”

 

“A whole fuckin’ inch,” she repeats.

 

I shake my head as though I were shaking the thought out. “Okay. I’m done.” I slouch again, noticing that she’s right. “Anyway, how was your night?”

 

She grimaces, looking away. “It was… fine, I guess. I just get in these moods sometimes, you know?”

 

I speak when her gaze falls on me again. “What kind of moods?”

 

She sighs. “Just like… down. On myself. Not really looking forward to my future. And I know I  _ should _ look forward to my future but I just can’t. I feel like I’m gonna get my hopes up for nothing.”

 

“I actually know exactly what you’re talking about,” I say.

 

She looks at me for a moment, bewildered. “Sorry, I get a little carried away sometimes. I wish I could say it was good but it really sucked. Other than being around you, of course.”

 

My heartbeat picks up speed. “I feel the same way. Last night sucked for me too. A lot.”

 

She smiles. “Yeah, fuck last night.”

 

I smile back. “Fuck it.”

 

I expect her to start doing something, like, actually getting ready to shower but she plops down beside me and I sit, too. She rests her stuff beside her and it’s stressful not having the buffer of holding my stuff to my chest, so I’m tempted to get it out of my locker but I decide to try my luck.

 

“I know tonight will be better,” she says.

 

“You do?”

 

“Yeah,” she continues, looking around at the lockers. “That is, if you want to spend it with me.”

 

Huh? “You want me to hang out with you tonight?”

 

“If that’s not too much to ask, yeah,” she says, looking down at her lap. “Sorry, I’m always too forward. If you don’t want to that’s totally fine.”

 

“No, no,” I say. “I’d love to. Not like I have anything going on anyway.”

 

She smiles. “Great. It’s a plan.” Then her expression falls. “I wasn’t sure you were gonna show up today. I got kinda worried.”

 

I frown. “Why wouldn’t I show up?”

 

She sighs. “I was worried I made you uncomfortable last night. By holding your hand and stuff.”

 

“Not at all,” I say. “It was actually really nice. It was probably the only part of my night that didn’t suck.” I regret saying so much until I see my response cheered her up.

 

“Well. I’m glad.” She says. “That it was nice, I mean.” She’s nervous. I hope I’m not making her uncomfortable.

 

“Shouldn’t we shower or something?” I ask, but not seriously.

 

“I’m not in a rush,” She says, leaning back against the lockers. “If you want, you can, but it’d also be nice to chat for a little bit.”

 

“I’d love to,” I say.

 

“Good.” She takes off her baseball cap and sets it on her stuff, and I can’t stop myself from looking at her curls, unobstructed by her hat. It looks like they’d spring back if you pulled on one. “I need someone to talk to.”

 

I lean against the lockers, too. “Don’t you have Louis?”

 

She plays with her fingers in her lap. “I do. But he just doesn’t…  _ get _ it all the time, you know?”

 

“And you think I would?” I resist the urge to pick at my fingers.

 

“I know you would,” she says, turning her head to face me. “You get bullied by Minerva.”

 

My heart drops to my stomach. “That’s why you want to talk to me?”

 

She looks like she walked in on a dead body. “What? No.” She focuses back on her lap again. “I mean. It’s part of it. Actually, it’s kind of complicated.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I think you’re fantastic aside from what we share in common, if that makes any sense. I just thought it’d be nice to connect to someone who may know what I’m going through.” Her gaze falls on a distant locker.

 

I’m not sure how much to share. I want to say, ‘but you don’t know me,’ but that’s big talk coming from me. I don’t  _ know  _ her, either, and look where I am. “I think you’re really great, too,” I say.

 

She allows herself to smile for a second before it falls again. “At the same time I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it with  _ anyone.  _ I know Louis wouldn’t get it, anyway. But I’m not sure you would, either.”

 

I keep finding myself looking at her; different parts of her face. Her lips, her eyes, her hair, her ears. But I force myself to look at the lockers, ultimately. “I can’t promise I’d understand, but I’ll at least have you know that I’m in the same situation.”

 

She gives it a moment. “The same situation?” She grabs onto the open door of a locker and swings it back and forth. Nervously. Slowly.

 

“Yeah. Not knowing if you’d understand.” I say this hoping she’ll tell me why Minerva picks on her.

 

But she doesn’t. “When you’re ready to tell me.” She looks at me with this sort of desperation in her eyes. “Please do.”

 

I meet her gaze and nod.

 

She has this way of speaking that makes it almost impossible not to be comfortable with her. Like she’d be okay with anything you say. Still, I have this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me not to open up. That she wouldn’t like me. I’m going to ignore it.

 

“Do you ever do anything about it?” I ask.

 

She’s shaken out of her daze. “Do what about what?”

 

“Do… anything. About the bullying,” I say.

 

She takes a moment to breathe, swishing air around her mouth. I think that’s a habit of hers. “Not much other than telling her off,” she says, defeated. “I really don’t even want anyone to know she does it.”

 

“Me either,” I say.

 

“What about you? Do you do anything?” she asks.

 

I feel kinda lame that I can’t say I beat the shit out of her for it. “No. She makes it this kind of… deal.”

 

“How so?”

 

I sigh. “It’s like, ‘let me do this and nobody has to know. Fight back and you’re fucked.’ I don’t even know if I’d be strong enough to fight.”

 

She just looks straight out in front of herself with this concerned expression. “Violet.”

 

“Clementine?”

 

She seems like she’s about to say something but then she drops it. “Nevermind.”

 

I look at her with my eyebrows scrunched together. 

 

She speaks again when she looks at me. “Just know.” She swallows, tucking a curl behind her ear. “Whatever she does, you don’t deserve it.” She says it as though she knows why Minerva fucks with me, but I can only hope she doesn’t.

 

Because if she knew, and it was the same reason as why Minerva fucks with _ her, _ wouldn’t she just tell me? But I know what Minerva’s like, so I can only assume it’s because of something stupid and benign, so I say “and you don’t deserve it, either.”

 

She has this smile like nobody’s said that to her before. If nobody except me knows, then probably nobody has. She looks at me. “Thank you.”

 

I know that being a lesbian isn’t bad, so I guess that’s why it hurts so much when Minerva picks on me for it. If I thought it was bad, I’d feel like I deserve it. And then, in the same vein, I do feel like I deserve it, even if it’s just 10% of me that does. It’s hard to feel like a good person when everyone around you demonizes a huge part of your identity.

 

It also feels weird to call being gay a huge part of my identity, but it is. It’s what keeps me up at night. It’s what would break my relationships if they found out. It’s what I’m always grappling with and trying to understand. It’s what determines how I’m treated by other people. How I view myself. How I view the people I love.

 

Clementine interrupts my thought process. “I really needed someone last night.” She hugs her arms to her chest.

 

“I’m sorry. If I knew-”

 

“I know. You would’ve helped me or stayed with me or whatever,” she finishes, and it’s nice that someone would assume I’d be empathetic. “I’m just saying that I know what it’s like, and if you ever need someone, you can come to me.”

 

“Why are you so kind, Clem?” I ask.

 

She tilts her head at me. “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean, you barely know me and you’re already willing to sacrifice your night to help me.”

 

“You are, too,” she says.

 

I breathe. In. Out. “I guess I am.”

 

She smiles. “So I guess you just need to ask yourself why you feel that way, and there’s your answer.”

 

_ It’s because of your smile, and the way your teeth barely poke out between your lips. Your hair and the way it glows golden in the sunshine. How you’re always wearing the same hat. How you were so quick to help me when I was in here the other day bleeding and crying. How you float like a feather when you’re playing baseball, how you bounce when you pitch, how your eyes look when you’re thinking, how your lips would feel if I just cupped your face and scooted closer and pressed mine to yours and felt how warm they are- _

 

“Anyway. I didn’t mean to ruin the mood,” she says, folding her legs beside her. “But we should probably at least start undressing or we’ll miss breakfast.”

 

My heart starts pounding. “I definitely don’t wanna miss breakfast,” I say.

 

“Well then,” she says, pulling her hair out of the pigtails. “Take off your clothes and you’ll get pancakes.” She giggles.

 

I can’t help but laugh back. “That’s direct,” I say, getting lost in all her curls, resting at her shoulders.

 

But then she’s standing up and grabbing onto the bottom of her shirt and pulling it over her head and I’m dizzy. She’s wearing a sports bra, and I’d expect no different from her, but I can hardly notice it before my hands find themselves balled up in front of my chest as if to tell me ‘no, don’t you think about getting undressed, too.’

 

If I didn’t know any better I’d say she looks nervous, too. “Are you alright, Violet?” she asks.

 

I swallow. “I’m fine. Just not used to changing in front of people I guess.”

 

“Haven’t you changed with everyone else before?” she asks.

 

“Yeah. I guess this is just more…” What’s the word? “Personal.”

 

“Well, I won’t make fun of you if you won’t make fun of me,” she says.

 

“I don’t have anything to make fun of you for,” I say, my heart thumping underneath my hands.

 

“Exactly. I don’t have anything to make fun of you for, either,” she says.

 

I giggle nervously. “I’m not even undressed yet.”

 

My gaze falls on a locker until it falls back on her, and she looks me in the eye and says, “neither am I.”

 

She looks at me as she hooks her fingers underneath her bra and pulls it over her head, expecting me to be changing too, but I’m not. I’m just staring at her incredulously and chewing the inside of my mouth and realize I’m looking at her chest for far too long so I look back at her face and this doesn’t seem to bother her. She just smiles at one corner of her mouth for a moment before it falls.

 

“Vi, if you’re uncomfortable, you can tell me,” she says.

 

I shake my head no. 

 

Then her eyes fall on my hands, and she takes a few slow steps closer. She wraps her hands around mine and I allow her to pull them away from my chest, even though it now feels like my heart is pounding into the open air, ringing through my ears, and all I can hear is that and my shaky breath. And all I feel is her warm hands in mine for just a moment before she leaves them at my sides and looks back up at me, her eyes wide, but then she relaxes them.

 

She tugs at the hem of my shirt and I catch just a hint of her own shaky breath before I’m lifting up my arms and she’s pulling it over my head and I’m not wearing a bra and my hair is probably messed up, my cheeks are probably on fire red, it’s probably obvious I want to kiss her; but then we’re both giggling and smiling at each other and I don’t care.

 

She crosses her arms over her chest and looks away so I say “it’s okay.”

 

She shakes her head and smiles. “I just…”

 

“What?”

 

“You’re so beautiful. I don’t want you to make fun of me.”

 

I grin. “I still don’t have anything to make fun of you for,” I say.

 

She grins back halfheartedly. “That might change.”

 

I giggle and it causes her to giggle in response. “Well, if you’re so desperate for me to have a problem with you, wanna hear one?”

 

We’re still giggling. Good. “Go ahead. Plant it on me.”

 

I take a couple steps closer and her eyes are bright. “You worry too much,” I say, extending my hands to wrap around hers. I gauge her reaction and she’s just barely smiling so I pull her arms out of the pretzel she’s made of them, exposing her again, just as she did with me.

 

“Sorry,” she says, almost a whisper.

 

“You also apologize too much,” I say.

 

She starts to mouth the word ‘sorry’ again but catches herself.

 

“And you’re also delusional,” I joke.

 

“Delusional?” she asks, and I’m still holding her hands.

 

All I would have to do is just tilt my head to the side and lean forward a couple inches and I’d be kissing her. And she’d be kissing back. And we’d be giggling too much to keep kissing but we’d stop and she’d kiss me again and we’d be alone until everyone comes back to their lockers and we’d miss breakfast but the pancakes aren’t that good anyway-

 

“Yes. Because you think I’m beautiful,” I say.

 

She swings our hands at our sides. Nervously. Slowly. She stutters. “You are, though.”

 

I raise my eyebrows. “Beautiful?”

 

“And delusional,” she says. “Because you think you’re not beautiful.”

 

“I guess we’re both delusional, then,” I say.

 

She hooks her fingers into her waistband and pulls and, all the while, I’m looking at her face, even as it dips as she steps out of her shorts and even as she looks back at me when she’s done. Then it seems like she’s looking for my approval so I allow myself to look down, only for a moment, expecting to see that her underwear is still on but it’s not and my heart skips and hops and jumps around the room.

 

“Well?” she asks.

 

“Well, what?”

 

“ _ Well, _ you got anything to make fun of me for?”

 

I expected her to be the type to shave. During my disbelief, I pull down my own pants and underwear and do an awkward dance to wriggle out of them, kicking them aside when I’m finally free, and I stand tall again to meet her gaze. 

 

“Nope,” I say.

 

She wipes a curl from her face.

 

I could easily figure out if she’s gay. I could ask, in which case she would answer. I could wait until she tells me. I could tell her that  _ I’m  _ gay and see how she responds. I could also kiss her and see if she kisses back, puts her hands somewhere on my body, melts into it; or she could push me away. She could tell everyone what I did. She could be disgusted and confused and I’d have just ruined the beginning of a real friendship. So I settle for enjoying this how it is and taking whatever meaning I want from it until I know how she feels.

 

I don’t know what meaning I want, though. I don’t know what I should think when she looks at me the way she does, with one eyebrow quirked up; when her eyes flash to every point of my face; when she takes my hands back and swings them again. I want this to be how it starts. How you begin to fall in love with someone and all the situations you get yourselves into where you’re too dumb and nervous to admit there’s feelings but it’s  _ clearly _ more than a friendship. And then you go back in time later, remembering all the shit you did, and it’s like ‘wow, I wish I would’ve fucking said something sooner.’

 

But this is only day three of being more acquainted. I want it to be love or admiration or  _ whatever _ in her eyes when she looks at me. I want her liking me to be the reason she talks to me and not because she’s getting bullied. When she holds my hands I don’t want it to be because she’s friendly or because she’s trying to cheer me up or because she thinks nobody else holds my hands and, it’s true, nobody else holds my hands, so if someone’s gonna do it they damn better be in some sort of love.

 

I don’t know how she feels. If she has any shred of feelings for me I want this to mean  _ something _ , even if we’re gonna inevitably separate when school is over. Even if all this culminates to is ‘the first girl I ever fell in love with but it didn’t work out, because reasons.’ But if she doesn’t, and she’s just so incredibly nice and so incredibly curious, then I want to go to sleep and forget I even had a crush by the time I wake up.

 

But she pulls me, bounding over toward the showers, so I guess right now she just  _ feels  _ like showering.

 

She lets me go to set down her soap and stuff and to turn on two showers, right next to each other, squealing and recoiling at the blast of cold water she gets on her arm. I know I should turn around and get my own soap but I can’t shake myself out of this daze I’m in; watching her. She does everything with so much energy, yet so carefree. Like a Disney princess that could beat the shit out of you. 

 

I imagine her wearing a big, poofy ball gown, taking down her hair and letting it drop 97 stories to the ground. It circles around my feet and I look up at the castle window and she’s looking down at me, expecting me to be able to climb all the way up to her, but I’m all the way down on the ground and I can almost feel her hair pooling at my toes but then I’m back in the showers again and it’s water, not hair.

 

She’s started to shower, so I turn on my heel to go get my soap and I pause, closing my eyes before I turn to face away from the lockers. Deep breath. Open my eyes. And, of course, all I see is Clementine through the doors in the shower, face poised to the water, letting it all run through her.

 

I clench my stuff in my hands and strut over there, knowing she can’t see me. I pretend I’m about to go up there and tell her I like her, somehow, some way, in the three days I’ve done more than pass her in the halls. How would I walk? Would I slouch like always? Would I stand tall and rock to the tips of my toes? Would I walk with a wide gait or would I pirouette over to her like a lovesick ballerina?

 

I walk all of these ways before she turns her head around to see me standing there, leaning to set all my things down like a flower stem bending in the wind, and she just smiles and turns to face the water again.

 

I splat a big glob of shampoo into my hair and assert my position beside her, washing my hair with purpose to distract myself from her. I scrub in little circles on my fingertips until my scalp is becoming numb and I turn to wash it all out, but then I’m almost facing her.

 

She stands the same way she was when I walked in; face poised to the water, eyes closed, lips just barely parted, water running down her in every which way. 

 

I make sure her eyes stay closed and all the while I’m saying to myself  _ ‘Violet, don’t do this, you’ll regret it,’  _ but I follow a drop of water. Down her chin. Down her neck and down her collarbone. In between her breasts, spattered with freckles like a sprinkled cupcake. Down lower still. Lower. 

 

Then I shoot my eyes up and notice she’s opened hers, and she’s looking at me, too. Lower. Lower. And then her eyes shoot up to mine and a smile just barely tugs at her lips.

 

She mouths ‘sorry.’

 

I smile and shake my head. I mouth ‘sorry’ back, as more of a joke than anything and, overcome, I lean against the shower wall, letting the water spray all over me as we continue smiling at each other.

 

Our faces eventually rest as we just stand there looking at each other. Tracing our eyes over every edge, every curve, every freckle, every scar; eyes landing wherever they please, and I don’t know if all this heat is coming from my body or the steam of the shower. But everything expands and becomes sensitive and if someone touched me right now I’d be a puddle.

 

“Violet.”

 

It feels real but at the back of my mind, I know she’s not looking at me the same way I’m looking at her. Well, she  _ is.  _ But how do I know what her intent is? Is this just what girls do? Or is she looking at me how I look at the other girls in the shower and I’m just attaching my own hopes to it? 

 

I don’t want to take advantage of her curiosity. She’s just a curious person in general. That’s probably what this is about; the situation just seems to call for it. And she wouldn’t have much of a way of knowing I’m gay in the first place, so it’s not like she knows there’s something behind it when I look at her.

 

“ _ Violet. _ ”

 

I wonder how she interprets me looking at her; in the shower and now. The way her hoodie swallows her whole, her curls escaping from the sides of her hat as usual. Her bright and warm eyes and skin. I just want to sink into her. Does she know that? As I stand leaning against my door frame, arms crossed in front of my own hoodie-clad body, does she know I can’t focus because I’m thinking about kissing her?

 

When I dart my vision back around the parts of my room I can see when I’m facing the hall, does she know I’m wishing Brody’s bobby pins and hair ties are hers? Wishing that she’s gonna be sleeping in Brody’s bed tonight? That I won’t have to pretend Brody is her? Or maybe that I don’t have to pretend my fingers are hers? That her hushed encouragements and phrases and sweet nothings aren’t just imagined? That she’s whispering in my ear and telling me how good I’m being and-

 

“ _ Vi-oh-leeet! _ ”

 

“Hey, I’m sorry. I was just out of it, I guess,” I say, trying to stop my cheeks from flushing at her grin.

 

“So you need me to repeat my question?” she asks.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Where do you want to go?”

 

I chew at my lip. “There’s only one place you can really go around this time of night.”

 

“Well,” she says, extending her hand. “Take me there!”

 

I take her hand in mine, luckily being able to turn away before she can catch my toothy smile. And then it’s last night all over again, except it’s me bounding up the stairs, pulling her along, and the giggling again. There’s no way we could stop if we tried. It feels like I’m holding hands with her soul.

 

“Uh, Vi,” she says in between a fit of giggles. “Where are we going?”

 

I let go of her hand to allow us to climb the ladder. I motion for her to go first and she stands in  front of the ladder, facing me.

 

“The roof.”

 

Her eyes shoot open. “The roof?!”

 

I nod. 

 

She looks like she’s about to protest, but then she regains her smile and turns to climb.

 

It smells of sickly sweet honeysuckles and pollen. The sky is a velvet dotted with stars and the air is hot and thick, like you could reach out and grab it. Clementine walks over to the edge and peers over at the distance from the ground before turning to me again. I wipe sweat from my forehead.

 

“So?” Clementine asks.

 

“So what?” I ask.

 

“So, what are we doing on the roof? In the dark? With nobody around?”

 

I look at her, making sure she’s looking back at me, and I turn my head to the sky. “Stargazing,” I say, walking to the center of the roof and sitting down. “If you wanna.”

 

She follows me, sitting to face me. “I wanna,” she says.

 

I sling my hoodie over my head and wipe my face off on it, and she copies, pulling hers off, her shirt coming up with it until she pulls that back down. 

 

The only light comes from the stars, moon, and the dorm windows below. The only cold thing up here is the concrete ground, somehow; despite the heat. Everything else is burning; my skin. My chest. The air I breathe. I’m lightheaded so I make my hoodie into a pillow and lie down with it under my head. Clementine does the same. 

 

“Do you remember any constellations?” Clementine asks.

 

“Nope,” I say.

 

“Me either.”

 

“We can just make up our own.”

 

I turn my head to the side and trace her profile. The plane of her forehead; the slope of her nose; her lips, blooming like flowers out of her face. The freckles I can only see up close, which are like constellations in their own right. Her eyes seem to glow, wide and pointing toward the sky. Relaxed, bordering on tired. Her skin is clear, eyebrows full and unplucked, baby hairs flanking either side of her forehead. 

 

She doesn’t notice me looking, all wrapped up in her own mind, so I look back to the sky. It’s full but it seems so empty compared to my imagination of what’s going on inside her head. The stars don’t have thoughts.

 

She does. “I see a bird,” she says.

 

“Where?”

 

“Come closer,” she says.

 

I shift my hoodie-pillow and bring my head about an inch from hers.

 

“Follow my finger,” she says, extending her arm to the sky, pointing at stars.

 

I do follow her finger, but not really. I’m more so just tracing my eyes along her hand and staring at the crescent moons in the beds of her nails.

 

“You see it?” she asks.

 

“I’m having trouble,” I half-lie. 

 

“You find one, then,” she says, kicking off her shoes.

 

But I can’t find anything. All I can see is a chaos of stars. I didn’t know this many stars existed until I ended up in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, where there’s not light pollution. And then one of the stars is blinking; I turn to my side where Clementine isn’t and find a whole cloud of flashing lights. Fireflies.

 

“Do you see that?” I ask.

 

“See what?”

 

“All those fuckin’ fireflies,” I say, pointing to them.

 

“Oh, yeah,” Clementine says, propping herself up on her elbows. “I call them lightning bugs. They’re always out at night now.”

 

“I guess you see them all the time coming back from practice,” I say, propping myself up too. 

 

“You don’t?” she asks.

 

“Not usually this many,” I say. “I guess it hasn’t been humid enough when I’m out here.”

 

Clementine throws her head back, her voice just loud enough to hear. “I used to catch them in a jar when I was a kid,” she says, closing her eyes. “I’d go to the bathroom- it was in the middle of my house so it had no windows, super dark, blah blah blah- and they’d glow so bright.”

 

I want to butt in but she seems like she wants to keep going. “I’d stay in there for hours. Dad would get worried and come in. I imagine he’d think he’s gonna walk in on something horrible but it was always just me with my glowing jar of lightning bugs.”

 

“Then I had to come here and it reminds me of it every time I see lightning bugs. And now I’m in a shitty boarding school and it just makes me kind of sad.” She leaves her eyes closed, breathing measured.

 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you-”

 

“-It’s fine. We’re making good memories now,” she says, tilting her head toward me and opening her eyes. Everything she does is delayed, like two seconds later than it should be. Like we’re existing beyond time.

 

“I know. Everything just sucks.”

 

She shrugs. “Well, anyway, let’s look for more constellations.”

 

I lie down after her. I imagine dipping my finger into the sky and swirling stars around, reordering them to look like different animals and such. I find a petal. Then another. And another. A flower.

 

“What kind of flower is it?” Clementine asks.

 

“A daisy, maybe?”

 

“Show me,” she says, resting her hands behind her head.

 

Should I do this? I should. Yes. I take one hand from behind her head and hold my pointer out with hers, tracing the flower in the sky. Her hand is warm and soft and definitely not as rough as it should be, given that she plays baseball. Much softer than my own. I only think about putting it different places for a split second before I’m done outlining the flower and I go to set her hand back down but she doesn’t let go of mine.

 

“Is this okay?” she asks.

 

“Yes,” I say.

 

She looks at me and smiles. “Good.”

 

But it’s more than okay. I know that whenever she lets go it’s gonna feel like I’m missing something. I know that when I touch myself tonight I’m gonna think of it, and knowing makes me sick to my stomach.

 

She lifts my hand up and starts tracing a shape.

 

“What is it?” I ask.

 

“A butterfly,” she says, beginning to trace it again.

 

With each trace, she loses a little more expression. A little more energy. I take over and begin tracing it myself, giving her a smile that she doesn’t return. Then I go slower and slower until we’re just holding hands and she takes our hands to her heart, holding them above her chest. It’s  _ pounding _ . Her lack of expression doesn’t match the torrent of anxiety she must have with this heartbeat.

 

“Clem?” I say, squeezing her hand.

 

She closes her eyes, holding me there. “Violet?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Do you ever wish you could fly away?” she asks, looking over at me when she doesn’t get an answer.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Just, like…” she says, wincing before speaking again. “Away. From everything. Escape it all.”

 

I’m not sure I’m catching what she’s talking about but I chance it anyway. “Like… do I wish I could die?”

 

She sighs. “Yeah.”

 

My mind floods with a million different possibilities. “Do you wanna be away from Minerva?”

 

“Of course I do,” she says with a softness I could never replicate.

 

“Me too.”

 

Then the floodgates open. “I wanna escape from everything she’s ever done to me. I want to leave her behind and leave behind everyone who has anything to do with her. I want to forget it all. Fuck, I even think about it when nothing’s going on. Every time she pulls some shit I can’t wait for it to be over so I can just carry on, but no. I never carry on,” she says, forcing her face not to twist into a cry.

 

She pulls our hands away from her chest and starts tracing the butterfly again, over and over. “And now I’m supposed to go to college and just forget about it? What if someone replaces her and they’re worse?” she asks rhetorically, her tracing becoming sloppier. “And she’s just gonna throw me out and find a new person to fuck with. How am I supposed to deal with that?” she says, and at this point her tracing is illegible but I let her do it still. Nervously. Slowly.

 

I think of last night again. _Ser-tra-line. Du-lox-e-tine._ _Ris-per-i-done._ I imagine all the pills, dry and scratchy down my throat as I swallow much more than my body can handle. What would I have wanted someone to say to me last night?

 

“Well, I’m sure everyone who loves you is glad you’re still here. Including me,” I say.

 

She rubs her thumb on my palm like a worry stone. “I don’t even really wanna die. I know it’d be painful and everyone would be sad, blah blah blah,” she says. There’s no way she notices how much she’s touching me. “I just wish it’d never happened.”

 

She swallows, then continues. “I live my life seeing all these things I should be enjoying but I can’t because all I can think about is her and her bullshit. And it’s like, is it even worth it if I’m not enjoying anything?”

 

I rest our hands down at our sides and she doesn’t stop rubbing mine. “Honestly, I don’t know if it’s worth it,” I say.

 

“Then why do we do it, Vi?” she asks.

 

_ Because one day, not even a week ago, I was just assaulted and I needed someone to be here for me. I needed someone to get me a bandaid and I needed someone to make sure I was okay and I needed someone to slip a note under my door and I needed someone to hold my hand the whole way back to the dorms. I needed someone to come up with bullshit constellations with me and I needed someone to remind me why I didn’t swallow Brody’s pills last night and you did, you did, you did. You did. You did. You did. You did- _

 

“I would’ve rather met you than be dead,” I say, turning my head to face her.

 

She sniffles. “I don’t want you to go back home to your shitty family,” she says.

 

“I know.”

 

A tear rolls over the bridge of her nose. “I don’t wanna stop talking to you when school’s over.”

 

“Me either.”

 

“I don’t wanna go to college.”

 

I feel like I should respond but I let her talk.

 

“I don’t want to grow up, I never want to have a job, I don’t want to grow up and pay taxes and get married and have kids and have my own house,” she says. “I wanna be a fucking kid. I wanna have a childhood. I want to worry about what color I want my room to be or what snack I’m gonna eat, not how I’m gonna avoid the next thing Minnie does to me or how I’m gonna survive the next five years of my life,” she finishes, holding my hand to her chest again.

 

“I know. I know.”

 

“But that’s just not how it fuckin’ works,” she says, smiling through her tear-ridden eyes.

 

I shake my head ‘no.’

 

“So don’t leave me,” she says, more of a question and less a demand.

 

“I won’t. Ever,” I whisper.

 

And then I’m feeling her heartbeat. Feeling the warmth from her chest and feeling it rise and fall as she breathes. I’m looking at her face, her eyes still on mine. I’m looking at her lips as she forces a smile. I’m looking at her lips as she licks a tear from them. I’m looking at her lips as her face relaxes and I’m looking at her lips as she looks at mine.

 

This could be our first kiss. I could just close my eyes and lean in and taste her salty tears but not care. Hear her sniffling but not care. Feel her cheek, wet on my hand, but not care. Nothing has to matter. I don’t have to worry about her leaving me or it ruining the next year of my life because what fucking matters, anyway? I could taste her lips. I could even feel her tongue on mine. I could.

 

I could, but I don’t. I just wipe a tear from her face and force myself to smile instead, and she offers her own weary one and swipes her free thumb across my cheek.

 

“I don’t want you to go back to your parents,” she says. “What will you do?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“What will you do if your dad hurts you?” she asks, threading her fingers in mine.

 

I sigh. “I’m just gonna have to deal with it,” I say.

 

“I don’t like that. Not at all,” Clementine says.

 

“I know. Neither do I.”

 

“I wish I could protect you somehow. Or that you didn’t even have to go at all,” she says.

 

“I know. But still, I’m gonna be here when it’s all over and then we can be with each other again.”

 

She looks at me for a moment before shaking her head as if to clear her mind. “Can we do this again?”

 

“Stargazing?”

 

“Yeah,” she says.

 

_ Watching the stars. Getting to hold her hand again. Maybe one of these times I’ll get my shit together and kiss her. Maybe we’ll see more fireflies, maybe she’ll tell me she likes me, maybe we’ll get to feel like the only two people who exist- _

 

“Yeah,” I say, lost in thought. “I mean yes. Yes, I’d like that.”

 

She smiles.

 

The rest of the night is us finding stars and looking at each other, swatting mosquitoes off each other’s skin and giggling about nothing in particular. It doesn’t matter. I can see the reflection of stars in Clementine’s eyes and they feel as deep as the universe. I want to bring her everywhere but ‘home.’ Places I’ve never wanted to go before; just so I could see them with her. Just so I can take her pain away- our pain- and see her face light up like it does so much already.

 

We laugh at stuff that doesn’t matter and we find constellations that don’t exist and talk about plans that are never gonna happen but I don’t really care, because she asks for me again as I stand in my doorframe, hand still in hers.

 

“Meet me at practice again tomorrow?” she asks.

 

“Of course,” I say.

 

And then she’s off to her dorm again. It’s the same old thing. Brody passed out in her bed, my journal resting on my bed opened to a page Minerva didn’t write in.

 

First I look out the window at all the stars, and they seem so much farther away now that I’m inside. So does Clementine, not holding my hand anymore. Even though she’s only a few dorms away she feels so far.

 

Second I remember how her hand felt as I rip out the page with “Minerva was here XOXO” and toss it into the trash. 

 

Throwing myself back on my bed, I stare at the ceiling. I imagine her hands. How soft they are. The length of her fingers. The ease with which they’d move past my shirt. Past my pants. Past my underwear and even further than that and I imagine how fast they’d be, how hard they’d be, how bad I want it. 

 

How bad I want to taste her. How bad I want her to be naked in front of me again, how bad I want the stars above us again, how bad I want to hear her say my name, feel the breath leave her mouth, feel her chest rise and fall again. Her name is on my lips tonight again.

 

For once I don’t hate it. It feels right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! What are your predictions? Any theories? Lemme know!


	4. How Come The Sun Don't Shine On Me Anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "People describe eyes like different stones or gems. Emeralds. Sapphires. Like a cloudy or cloudless sky, like chocolate or mahogany or amber; Clementine’s eyes are the night sky, with little stars reflecting here and there, as though her eyes are freckled with light. As though you could keep going and never stop. It’d be hard to close my eyes if I were to kiss her. I’d just want to look- deeper, and deeper, and deeper-"
> 
> Secrets are exchanged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS!! CHAPTER!! IS!! GRAPHIC!!   
> From the very beginning. So here's your warning!
> 
> I've been telling people to expect this chapter in "a couple days" and then kept getting to tired from work to finish it. Grrr. But at least it has some scenes and mishaps you've all been waiting for! And I know you have because you won't stop asking for it ;)
> 
> The song I've picked for this chapter is We Only Attack Ourselves by Funeral Suits, which is a song I've actually covered and have yet to post the cover anywhere. The music video tells a different story than what I take from it, but, if you use context clues from past notes I've written, for me this song represents sexual assault and the isolation that follows, specifically in the line "how come the sun don't shine on me anymore?" It's how I imagine Violet feels after all the bullshit that's happening to her.
> 
> I tried to balance this chapter between "bad" stuff and "good" stuff because I never like writing a chapter that has no "reward," so to speak. Like if a character has to suffer usually I like them to get to recover in the end, although this story is heavily an angst story. I just like making people feel things, you know? Not everything someone takes from your writing has to be happy, but I like there to be a silver lining.
> 
> Without further ado.
> 
> Song Recommendation: Funeral Suits- We Only Attack Ourselves.

“You think about her when you fuck yourself,” Minerva says.

 

As though I haven’t thought about that fact enough already. As though I don’t know I make sure, every night I do, I don’t say her name loud enough to wake Brody. As though I’m not reminded of it when I wake up from my dreams about her, in a hot sweat, in a dark room. As though I don’t know Minerva’s read my journal.

 

“And you think you’re not girlfriends?”

 

It’s gonna be harder for her to touch me this time but she doesn’t mind, because she’s got that leering grin again, the door’s locked and she keeps getting closer. Why am I just sitting here?

 

She takes another step. “Bullshit.”

 

I cross my legs, scooting back on my bed. “She’s not even fucking gay.”

 

Minerva stifles a laugh. “Yeah, whatever.” Then her smile drops and she has this fake sultry expression tacked onto her face, looking me up and down.

 

It never happens how you think it will. You’ll think you’re gonna be in love and you’re gonna want it and it’s gonna feel amazing, relieving, exhilarating; you’ll be shaking but you’ll reach for her waist or her back or run your fingers through her hair; you’ll be giggling, you’ll be trying to look away, your heart will be pounding but you won’t care because she’s everything.

 

“For someone who’s not gay, she definitely acts like it,” she says, kneeling on the floor in front of me.

 

“Is  _ that  _ how you justify what you do to her?” I ask, scooting back as far as the wall will allow.

 

“I don’t need justification,” she answers.

 

But it doesn’t always go like that. Sometimes it happens with a tear down your face. Sometimes it happens with her hands on your ankles, pulling your legs apart, and you try to kick but she’s stronger than you. You give up.  _ I  _ give up. She laughs before the room falls silent again.

 

“Why don’t you fight, Violet?”

 

She doesn’t know I fight the thought of her every time I’m thinking of Clementine. She doesn’t know I’m fighting it when I see her in the hallway, chatting with all her friends; she doesn’t know I’m fighting it when I sound out the names of Brody’s antipsychotics.

 

“Why do you do it?” I ask.

 

She unbuttons every button of my pants with the dexterity of someone who’s done it many times. I’m sat with my chest curled into myself as though I couldn’t make myself any smaller, unlike my legs. The air conditioning causes my skin to prickle and my blankets are balled up into my fists. 

 

“Because you like it,” she says, and I don’t have to lift my butt for her to tear my pants off my legs, or for her to take my underwear off. “Boxers? Dyke.”

 

She looks me over. “Plus nobody else would fuck you if I didn’t.”

 

“I don’t like it,” I say, my voice cracking like I have to tell the teacher I wet myself. “I don’t. I don’t. I don’t.”

 

This isn’t how I want my first time to be. I want Clementine and I to be kissing, I wanna at least bother to take each other’s shirts off; I want it to be tender and kind and loving and  _ consensual. _

 

“Then why are you wet?” she asks.

 

She’s still knelt in front of me, and her breathing gets heavy. I can tell she knows. She’s trying to stop it. Her mouth just barely hangs open and she’s so close I can feel her breath on me and she’s just  _ looking.  _ At my reaction. At me as she spreads me apart, looking at it like she wasn’t expecting it to be there. Her cheeks are flushed.

 

“This is-” I start, my face scrunching up. “-this is  _ rape, _ ” I say, the last word ripping out of me like a cry. “Do you understand what you’re doing to me? Do you- do you know that you’re  _ raping me? _ ”

 

She bites her lip, a smile threatening to break through. Then she pulls her hand away, wrapping it around my inner thigh, flickering her sight from it to my face over and over. “You think this… is  _ rape? _ ”

 

Then she looks me dead in the eyes, tilting her head as she positions her fingertips at my entrance. “No,” she says.

 

Then she has this wicked grin, half anger, half something else. “ _ This  _ is rape,” she says.

 

And then she jabs her fingers inside me and I yell, “Fuck!” I snap my legs closed and kick her chest, sending her to the floor. She looks in shock, like I stabbed her, before anger widens her eyes again and she stands taller than a mountainside above me.

 

Like I said. She’s stronger than me.

 

She slaps me again, just like she did in the locker room, and I’m full-on crying now. Tears and all. She leans over me and pins one of my shoulders down to the bed even though I’ve given up now. I feel blood running down my cheek as she enters me again, forcing herself in and out, intending to hurt me.

 

I didn’t want my first time to be rape. 

 

I hate everything about it. How strong her hand feels as she props herself up on me. The noises it makes as she pumps in and out. The smell of her floral perfume; the roughness of the sheets below me. I want to vomit.

 

“I know Clementine’s gay,” she says, her face inches from mine. Like she’s gonna brush her lips against mine again.

 

But she doesn’t. She just says, “I know she’s gay because she likes it when I fuck her.”

 

I wail. I imagine Clementine in the same position as me, writhing against Minerva as she forces herself upon her, tears soaking her face, her expression the same as when she cried last night; unable to fight despite her strength. 

 

“And so do you,” she says, withdrawing. And she brings her fingers to my mouth, dragging them across my bottom lip, coated in my own substances.

 

I don’t have to take this. I don’t have to let her pass my lips- I don’t have to let her lie on top of me- so I don’t.

 

I force her off, sending us toppling to the floor, and I’m straddling her as I raise my arms to beat down on her face, but I don’t get to. 

 

She grabs my wrists and my blood drips on her as she flips us, pinning me again. She barely has to try. Just one arm to pin me down, and she puts all her weight on me, her head resting on my chest as her other arm snakes down and she forces herself into me again.

 

“She likes it when I do this,” she says, speaking into my shirt as I cry. “She gets wet, too.”

 

I can’t move anything so I make up for it in cries. It’s pitiful. It has no force behind it. It’s the cry of someone who’s given up.

 

There’s a frantic knock at the door and Minerva stops, still inside me, picking her head up. I manage to free an arm and land a jab to her cheek while her guard’s down and slide out from underneath her, walking myself backwards like a crab. She shakes it off.

 

She says, in a hushed whisper, “get dressed.”

 

And in some fucked up way we’re helping each other. She throws my pants and underwear at me and I put them on as though there’s a fire coming, and she wipes her fingers off on the carpet and stands tall, prim and proper. As though my blood isn’t on her. 

 

I look to her for approval before moving to open the door and my crying worsens before the lock even clicks open. Brody’s met with my blood-spattered face and a blood-spattered Minerva standing here like the cat who swallowed the canary. 

 

“Okay, what the fuck happened here? I heard yelling and crying and-” she looks at my face. “-holy shit, why are you bleeding?”

 

I grit my teeth, sliding on my shoes as I push through her. Down the stairs and past the gathering people. Through the trail Clementine and I took to get back to the dorms, when all the crickets were chirping and the stars were hung high in the sky. Through the tall grass and reeds to the baseball field. 

 

“ _ Violet.” _

 

There’s no way Clementine didn’t know I was just assaulted by Minerva when she came into the locker rooms that day. She wanted to help me because she knew. That’s why she was so concerned. That’s why she wanted to stay. That’s why she knew I wasn’t okay.

 

Why didn’t she tell me? Why wasn’t her first instinct to tell me she knows how it feels? What’d she think I’d do? How did she think I’d react? Why wouldn’t she assume that I’d react with compassion and understanding and we could get through this together?

 

_ “Violet!” _

 

This isn’t right. This isn’t how I wanted to find out. I wanted it to be while we’re calm and at ease with each other, relaxing somewhere, talking about our deepest and darkest secrets and nobody has to be crying or bleeding or running from anyone. It could be therapeutic. It could be cathartic. 

 

But I wish we didn’t have to find out at all. I wish this hadn’t ever happened to either of us and we would’ve just happened upon each other at the best point in our lives and had all happy, sunshine-y things to talk about all the time, forever. That Minerva didn’t exist. I wish I wasn’t strutting toward the field with blood on my hair and blood on my lips and blood on my shirt as Clementine races toward me, throwing her glove on the ground.

 

_ “VIOLET!” _

 

By the bleachers she stands facing me and swipes her thumb across my cheek, collecting blood. 

 

“Why are you bleeding?”

 

I let out a wail before I gather myself and look her in the eyes, my cry wrinkling my nose, and I know she knows. She knows exactly what I’m about to say because, before I can say “tell me what Minerva did to you,” she’s falling to her knees and I’m catching her and she looks at me, her eyes brimming with tears, and we embrace each other before she lets her first cry rip from her throat. 

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I stutter, clutching her to me as though she’s gonna dissolve into thin air. 

 

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she repeats, maybe not entirely truthful as her breathing staggers and she heaves, like the breath was taken right out of her lungs. 

 

We hold one another. Cry into one another. Shake and shift and stutter and we don’t even need to say anything because the crying says everything. I know Minerva violated her. I know she’s hit her, too. I know she’s gone through the exact same thing I’ve gone through and that she didn’t want to tell me for the same reason I didn’t want to tell her.

 

The crying dies down and then we’re just holding one another, feeling each other’s warmth and running our hands up and down one another’s backs, steadying our breathing. She’s covered in my tears and I’m covered in hers but we don’t care. 

 

She gathers herself enough to help me to my feet and hold my hand all the way to the bathroom, sitting me on the sink. The emptiness makes our sniffling echo off the tiles, and everything is too sterile. Too bright. The fluorescent lights swallow me whole.

 

“I don’t want you to leave,” I say.

 

She grabs a paper towel to wipe off her face, and then she grabs another one and runs it under hot water. She looks exhausted. Her face is nearly expressionless and her mouth just barely hangs open. Her eyes look as though they’re about to close. Still, she walks towards me and manages to smile. “Why would I leave?” she asks.

 

“To get bandages,” I say.

 

She maintains her smile as she pulls bandaids out of her back pocket and steps toward me. “I always come prepared.”

 

“Three?”

 

“Two for your thumbs,” she says, tearing the paper off one. She takes the warm paper towel to my face and I’m reminded of the last time this happened. Dabbing at my cheek like I’m made of glass. “You always pick them to death when you’re nervous.”

 

And like last time, when she hits the cut itself it acts as a catalyst to my crying and I start sniveling and I know I’m not particularly attractive right now. And like last time she says “shhh, shhh, it’s okay,” and tries to keep smiling but she starts crying, too.

 

She plasters the bandaids to my thumbs and cheek but her hand lingers there as we cry, cupping my cheek, and I hope she thinks I’m only blushing because I’m crying in front of her, but I can’t help myself and I end up nuzzling my face into her touch. She smiles with half her mouth.

 

Then we’re looking into each other’s eyes again and her face looks underwater from all my tears. I imagine her hair splaying out at her sides as we swim underwater; floating and weightless. And I swim up to her and take her face into my hands and she’s perfect. Perfect with her eyes like glass marbles, perfect with her teeth barely peeking from behind her lips, perfect with her freckles painted on like a porcelain doll. Closer. Closer. Touching. Perfectly warm.

 

All the times I’ve kissed the pillow or my hand or the mirror wishing it was someone only half as beautiful as her and now she’s right in front of me. I wouldn’t have to wonder what it feels like anymore or wonder what her hair feels like running through my fingers. I’d only wonder why I hadn’t done it sooner.

 

Then she removes her hand and backs away, crying harder, holding her hands to her head. She starts pacing back and forth before she sits on the ground clutching her head and trying to control her breathing.

 

“Clementine?”

 

She wipes her face with her hands and speaks through them. “Violet.”

 

“Yes?”

 

She groans and stands back up, shifting her weight. “I didn’t want you to find out like this,” she says.

 

“Neither did I.”

 

She takes a step closer. “Can you… like,” she says, tripping over her words. “I mean. I know you know why Minerva-“

 

“-you don’t have to say it,” I say.

 

“So, you’re-“

 

“-yes,” I say.

 

“Fuck,” she says, smiling, and then her crying swallows it. She looks toward a distant floor tile and swishes air around her mouth. “This is stupid, but I’m not ready to come out to you yet,” she says.

 

“It’s not stupid,” I say. “I wasn’t ready, either.”

 

She nods, still avoiding looking at me. “So can we just pretend like this never happened? And I can come out to you when I’m ready?”

 

“Of course,” I say. “I’ll do the same.”

 

“Thank you,” she says, and takes my hand.

 

Clementine  _ is  _ gay. And when she holds my hand, looks me in the eyes, peeks down at my lips, moves my bangs from my face; it probably has the same intent behind it as when I do it. When we talk for hours, when we looked at each other’s nude bodies in the showers, when we stand looking at each other for longer than usual…

 

“Hey Clem, when did all this start?”

 

Her grip on my hand loosens. “Jesus. I, um, haven’t really been keeping track,” she says, swaying our hands back and forth. 

 

“She’s been picking on me for as long as I can remember, too,” I say, giving her hand an affirming squeeze. “She just recently started touching me.”

 

She starts to cry again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“Why didn’t  _ you  _ tell  _ me? _ ” I ask, but I answer her anyway. “Because I didn’t know how you’d react.” In hindsight it’s stupid. Clementine’s the kindest person I’ve ever met.

 

She helps me off of the sink and we exit the bathroom, her hand still in mine. “Do you think she’s still in your room?”

 

“Nah,” I say. “Brody probably took care of her.”

 

“Violet?”

 

“Clementine?”

 

“I wanna say something,” Clementine says, searching around the hall for her answer. “But I have no idea how to phrase it.”

 

“You can try,” I say.

 

She takes a deep breath. In. Out. “Thank you. For everything.”

 

I just turn and smile at her. 

 

“I feel like there’s no way to thank you that… sounds like enough,” she says.

 

“You don’t have to thank me.”

 

“But I want to,” she says, blotting her tears on her shirt.

 

She doesn’t stop holding my hand all the way back to the room and the relief that settles over me is indescribable. Relief that I’m not keeping a secret anymore, relief that Clementine probably likes me; relief that there’s hope in this situation.

 

“Hey, Brody,” I say as I open the door. 

 

“Hey, Vi,” she answers, scrubbing at bloodstains. She stands up and takes a few tentative steps towards us. She tosses a towel into the trash.

 

Clementine squeezes my hand once and I squeeze hers twice. “So.”

 

“Don’t worry,” she answers. “I don’t believe a word she told me.”

 

“What’d she tell you?” I ask.

 

She squints and then shakes her head. “You okay if Clem hears it?”

 

Clementine turns to me and nods once. “Yes,” I say.

 

Brody scoffs. “She says you tried to kiss her.”

 

I scoff in return and Brody faces me, hands on her hips. 

 

She continues. “Look. I can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through, but just know I don’t think any differently of you.”

 

“For what?” I ask.

 

She tilts her head. “For being gay. Well, either of you.”

 

Clementine looks at me and then looks back. “How do you know?” I ask.

 

Her expression is blank. “Clementine’s your girlfriend.” She clasps her hands together. “Right?”

 

Fuck. I know it doesn’t mean much if Clementine says no, but the thought of her doing so makes my heart race. But she doesn’t.

 

I just say, “Maybe. We’re… still getting to know each other.”

 

Brody’s gaze clouds over. “Still getting to know each other?”

 

I nod.

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

Brody doesn’t seem to notice when Clementine starts rubbing her thumb over my hand.

 

She rests one hand on her forearm. “Violet, I’m bi.” She takes the same hand and runs it through her hair, unsure of where to put it. “So. I get it.”

 

Clementine smiles without her teeth.

 

She continues. “People aren’t always accepting. Including Minerva.”

 

I can’t help myself. “She does it to you, too?”

 

Clementine avoids Brody’s gaze, instead looking at a bloodstain on the carpet and sighing.

 

Brody opens her mouth but doesn’t speak. She rests her hand on her arm again. “Does what?”

 

Clementine squeezes my hand, her lips in a tight line. 

 

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, and force a smile, but I know Brody sees through it. “Picks on you.”

 

“She leaves me alone, for the most part,” she says. “Probably because I’m on the baseball team and all.”

 

Clementine looks at me, tucking a curl behind her ear.

 

“Well, I don’t think any differently of you, either,” I say, and Clementine’s smile creeps up her face. “I’m glad you told me.”

 

Clementine stands taller.

 

“I’m sorry I had to find out like this. I wish the situation were better,” she says. She starts to take a step back but pauses. “Um. You should probably go while I clean this up.”

 

“I can clean it,” I say, stepping farther inside the room, but Brody doesn’t move.

 

“You’ve had a bad enough day already. Let me take care of this,” she says.

 

“Thank you,” I say, and Clementine starts pulling me out of the room.

 

As soon as the door’s closed, Clementine’s pulling me down the hallway as per usual when we have somewhere to be. This time it’s more tender. 

 

She allows me to climb up the ladder first and for whatever reason I feel like I’m going to be met with Minnie at the top. I even stand there and look around and there’s no way anyone else is up here with us, but the feeling lingers. Then Clementine’s standing with me for a moment until she goes and looks over the edge.

 

The whirlwind of emotions I’ve experienced today hits me like a runaway train and I rub my eyes with my palms. I stand not too far behind Clementine, and I feel like I’ve just woken up. Like I fell asleep for twelve hours on the way to this roof. I go to stand next to her and look at the distance to the ground; the same as I remember it. Clementine’s not smiling; she pokes at her cheek with her tongue, turning to face me.

 

I speak first. “I feel strange.”

 

“You had a long day,” she says.

 

I breathe. In. Out. “I should be crying or something. This makes no sense.”

 

Clementine bites her lip and tucks a curl behind her ear. “It’s okay to feel like you don’t need to cry.”

 

“Did you cry?” I ask, looking over the edge. The fireflies blink here and there, like stray sparks.

 

“When it happened to me first?”

 

I turn to face her again. “Yeah.”

 

“It took me weeks to cry,” she says. She takes off her hat to redo her pigtails. “And even then I didn’t recognise that anything she did was wrong.”

 

“You didn’t?”

 

“I had to think of her doing it to someone else for it to seem wrong. I felt like I was the one who fucked up,” she says, putting her hat back on.

 

I draw my eyebrows together, staring holes into the ground. “Why didn’t I stop her?”

 

“You tried,” she says, stepping closer.

 

“But did I try enough?” I say.

 

“There is no ‘enough,’” she says.

 

I can’t figure out anything to say so I fall into her, pressing my whole self into her in a hug. She smells like summer. The rain. The sun. The flowers and the grass and the clouds and the stars and the fireflies at night and my heartbeat is out of control.

 

I could back up and kiss her. I could close my eyes, tilt my head and capture her lips. And would she reciprocate? Would she kiss me back? Would she taste like summer, too? Like the dewdrops on the grass, like the heat of the sun on my skin; like the sound of cicadas hissing through the trees?

 

But she’s not ready, so when I back up I just force a smile that my tears find a way through.

 

“Well, there it is,” I say, avoiding looking at her.

 

“There’s what?” she asks. 

 

“My crying,” I answer. I sit down and she follows. “Guess I should be careful what I wish for.” I feel like seawater is pouring out of my eyes. It stings. The bandaid on my cheek is getting soaked with tears. The whole right side of my face feels heavier. Like it’s being dragged off.

 

She forces a sympathetic smile before she cries, too, bringing her hands to her head as though she’s trying to keep her hat from flying away. “God. Fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuck.”

 

“What’s wrong?” I ask, wiping a tear on the back of my hand.

 

She gets up, takes a couple steps back and a couple steps forward, not sure where to go. “This is so fucked up.”

 

“I know.”

 

“The whole thing,” she says.

 

“I know.”

 

“I wanna kill her.”

 

“Me too.”

 

She looks at me and nods her head toward the edge, so we both go to stand there again. She rests her forearms on the railing and I shove mine deep in my pockets.

 

“That’d be a bad idea, though,” she says. Her eyes fall heavy on the ground below.

 

She continues. “Because I’d go to jail. And isn’t it fucked up? I’d go to jail but she wouldn’t?”

 

“It’s absolutely fucked,” I say.

 

“They don’t even think girls can do that to other girls. But what is it if it isn’t rape?”

 

“I have no idea, Clem.”

 

She shakes her head. “I didn’t think it went like this.”

 

“How so?”

 

“It just seemed so… Normal. Obviously not ‘normal normal,’ but I mean.” She sniffles. “I thought I’d know it was happening. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I didn’t even know it was rape until weeks later when it was too late to do anything about it. I thought if it ever happened to me it’d feel like rape.”

 

“What’d it feel like, then?” I ask.

 

“It just felt humiliating and scary, I guess. But I thought I’d  _ know, _ you know?”

 

“Know it’s rape?”

 

“Yeah,” she says, dragging her shoe over the ground. “But I guess I just had the wrong impression of what it feels like.”

 

“It’s not too late to do anything, you know,” I say.

 

“Oh, Vi. I can’t go to the police about it. They’d-”

 

“-No,” I say. “Not that.”

 

“What, then?” she asks.

 

“We can get through this together,” I say, resting my hand on her forearm. “It’ll suck and it’ll be hard, but we can do it.”

 

She cries harder. “We only have a few weeks.”

 

Oh, yeah. 

 

No. Wait.

 

“Bullshit,” I say, straightening my back.

 

“Huh? School’s over soon and then we go ‘home,’” she says.

 

“I don’t have a home,” I say.

 

Clementine scrunches her eyebrows at that information, but then presses on. “And…?”

 

“I could be as close to you as I wanted.”

 

“It doesn’t really work like that,” she says.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“You’re gonna move to a town you’ve never been to before, get the first job you’ve ever had, and live in your first home away from the dorms? Isn’t that a little ambitious?”

 

“What else am I gonna do? Go be with my parents?”

 

She cries harder. She’s one step away from making noise. “I don’t want you to be with your parents,” she says.

 

“Exactly-”

 

“-I mean this weekend,” she says, facing me. “Obviously at all, too. But fuck. This weekend is gonna suck.” She sits, makes her hoodie into a pillow, lies down, and I follow. “I can ask Louis if you can come to his house, too, alright?”

 

“Don’t,” I say. 

 

“Why not?” she asks, rolling her head to face me.

 

People describe eyes like different stones or gems. Emeralds. Sapphires. Like a cloudy or cloudless sky, like chocolate or mahogany or amber; Clementine’s eyes  _ are _ the night sky, with little stars reflecting here and there, as though her eyes are freckled with light. As though you could keep going and never stop. It’d be hard to close my eyes if I were to kiss her. I’d just want to look- deeper, and deeper, and deeper-

 

“-Because I need to face my fears,” I say. “I need to see my parents one last time.”

 

“And get beaten?”

 

“I won’t.”

 

“Why would you want to see  _ them? _ ” she asks.

 

“I don’t  _ want  _ to see them. It’s for closure.”

 

“Closure?”

 

“They’re gonna be dead to me after this.”

 

Clementine sighs. “That’s really intense.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“No, it’s fine. I get it. It’s just, like,” she says, resting her hat on her stomach. “A big fuckin’ deal.”

 

“Yeah,” I say. I have no hat to rest on my stomach so I rest my hands there instead.

 

“I wish I could see my dad,” she says.

 

“Does it ever bother you that he killed someone?”

 

“No,” she says, her face poised to the stars. “I get why he was upset.”

 

“And why was that?”

 

“He killed the man his girlfriend cheated on him with,” she says. She closes her eyes, as though talking about this is calming her. Catharsis. “I just wonder what it feels like. To kill someone, I mean.”

 

She takes my hand as she continues. “Like, does it feel good? Or does it feel bad, even when it’s someone you hate?”

 

“I guess it’s easier to separate yourself from it if you haven’t done it before, but seeing someone’s blood and guts is actually really gross and difficult,” I say, rubbing my thumb over her hand this time.

 

“You’ve killed someone?”

 

“I watched my grandma die,” I say, closing my eyes, too; seeing the stars burned into my retinas.

 

“Oh, right. But you said you weren’t traumatized, right?”

 

“Now that I’ve experienced what Minerva’s done to me, trauma makes more sense.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“At the same time it makes less sense. How does it work?”

 

“What? Getting over it?” she asks.

 

“That’s part of it.”

 

“You’ll think you’re getting over it and then it’ll hit you full-force again when you least expect it,” she says, in a tone so sincere I’m obligated to believe her.

 

“Fuck.”

 

“But there’s nobody else I’d rather get through it with than you,” she says, and I just wanna fucking do it. Take the moment- the opportunity- to kiss her lips and just feel her and smell her and taste her and I don’t need to wonder if it’s love because I know it is-

 

“-for a few weeks,” I breathe.

 

“Best fucking few weeks to ever exist.”

 

“Damn right,” I say.

 

And with her hand in mine, the stars hang high in the sky. Other students begin to turn their dorm lights off and we only stop holding hands to climb back down the ladder and then we’re holding one another again. And I wonder, with her warm up against me, what it would feel like to be touched by someone without malice. Who cares about me and doesn’t want me to hurt and who would take her time for me.

 

We reach my door and I expect her to let go and say goodbye as usual but she keeps holding on, and when I turn to face her, her eyes are wide like the moon.

 

“Clementine?”

 

“Can I stay with you tonight?” she asks.

 

“Where? My bed’s small and Brody’s sleeping in here,” I say.

 

But she just shakes her head. “I’m small, too. And so are you.”

 

“Are you saying you want to sleep in the same bed?”

 

She smiles. I smile.

 

She opens the door and Brody’s asleep as she usually is; stomach-down, facing the wall, her arms splayed wildly out beside her like some sort of dancer. I look at Clementine’s reaction to her and she just rolls her eyes and makes her way to my bed.

 

I think for a moment- beside this girl, who’s going to college and playing baseball and has friends, a life- and notice my life is in shambles. She’s been assaulted by Minerva, too, but she’s already getting over it and I’m just getting started. Me. Without a real family or home, without direction, floating in an ocean of people like a crushed up soda can. And I wonder. Why do I fight? Why do I even try when it seems like the universe is only telling me to stop?

 

“You should go get pajamas,” I whisper, despite not needing to. You can’t rouse Brody from her sleep; it’s impossible. She’s slept through the fire alarm.

 

“I don’t wanna go all the way back to my room, though,” Clementine pouts.

 

“What? You live, like, five dorms down.”

 

“Exactly!”

 

I look at her, illuminated by moonlight, and she’s making puppy dog eyes at me so I grab a shirt from my stack and drop it on her lap.

 

“Well, get to it,” I say, beginning to take my own shirt off.

 

She follows suit and for awhile we just sit there, wearing nothing but underwear. And it feels nice not to be made fun of for wearing boxers or for having a small chest or for just existing. We look at each other so long we forget and then I lean forward and rest my head on her shoulder.

 

“Don’t go,” I mumble.

 

“Go? I’m in my underwear, what do you-”

 

“-ever,” I say, nuzzling my forehead into her.

 

She pets my hair and leans her own head against mine. “Never,” she says.

 

And I know it’s not entirely true; the end of the school year must come eventually and we’re gonna go our separate ways, for as long as that lasts. But we have a few weeks, and I know she’d stay longer if she were given the choice. I’d do this school bullshit all over again if I could’ve discovered her in my first years and spent the rest of them with her.

 

We lie down facing one another and I smile at her when she sweeps my bangs from my face, barely able to keep our eyes open with exhaustion. 

 

“I’ve had such a fuckin’ day,” I say, pulling the covers up over us.

 

“I know,” she says. “But we can finally relax now.”

 

I eye her pigtails and imagine putting tens of hundreds of little daisies all up in her curls. I lie there sweeping my eyes over her face and for a moment I’m in my meadow of flowers again. My dream place. The place I want to be with her.

 

“Why do you think she does it?” I ask.

 

“Who, Minnie?”

 

“Yeah,” I say.

 

Clementine speaks with her eyes closed. “She hates gay people,” she says.

 

“Yeah. I just don’t get how you can hate gay people  _ that much _ ,” I say.

 

“Me either,” she says. “And I especially don’t get how anybody could hate you.” 

 

“Ditto,” I say, with a smile she can’t see.

 

I flip over and for a moment I regret it, not being able to see or feel Clementine around me, but then I feel her pressing into my back, wrapping her arms around me. Everything feels warm. Everything feels light. Everything feels as it should be.

 

And, if only for a night, I don’t wonder why I fight anymore.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm sorry to anyone whose comments I haven't answered; it's been difficult for me to balance both work and my hobbies, but I'm going to try and reply to everyone who comments on this chapter.
> 
> As always, tell me what you think!
> 
> And as for an uploading schedule, I can only promise it'll take about a week to upload. Give or take a couple days. But I absolutely promise this story WILL see its end!


	5. And there's nothing I can do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Does it feel good when you go back to your dorm afterward and think about it in front of whoever you’re rooming with? What? Does it make you feel accomplished?”
> 
> “Satisfied?”
> 
> She steps closer.
> 
> “Fulfilled?”
> 
> She steps closer.
> 
> “Are you proud of yourself when you-”
> 
> Minnie and Violet and Clem share some words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WORK!  
> It's a thing, and it's happening, but I'm keeping my promise to finish what I've started. I have this whole thing planned out.
> 
> I didn't want to write this part for you to understand why Minnie does what she does; it's designed to be confusing, as revealed when Clem and Vi talk about it. That's how it is in my experience. There are some questions you'll never have answered and You'll either deal with that or suffer more.
> 
> I also wanted to show that intimacy doesn't always involve kissing and fucking or whatever. People in a relationship can no each other inside and out and all around and still haven't kissed or done anything yet. I don't want their declaration of their relationship to be the first time they kiss because love is so much more than that, as shown by what Minnie does to Vi in this chapter.
> 
> Idk what else to say.
> 
> OH YEAH! THE SONG!
> 
> I picked Killer by Phoebe Bridgers because I feel like it describes the situation to a degree. Vi is worried she's the "killer," and so is Clementine, but it's really Minnie and it should be obvious. I mean. She's doing 'what she does' to them. But they're so wrapped up in each other that, although she's the root of their problems currently, all they're really concerned about is their relation to each other. Healing. That shit.
> 
> Song recommendation: Killer- Phoebe Bridgers

“Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck,” she says, holding her hands to her head again, as though she’s keeping it from falling apart.

 

“I promise it’s not that bad, Clem,” I say, taking a couple steps forward.

 

Which is the opposite of what I’d have said after it happened. I feel bad for lying to her even though it’s only to keep her from losing it; the only way I could ever justify lying to her about anything. But I think she knows because it doesn’t calm her one bit.

 

“Then will you just let me see it?”

 

“No.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because no matter how bad it is, it’s just gonna make you upset,” I say, resting my hands on her shoulders. Kneading my fingers into them.

 

But she doesn’t look at me. She looks at the floor, trying to control her breathing. “The bruise goes past the bandage,” she says, her voice demure. “It’s bad.”

 

I know this already because I felt the bruise forming.  _ Boom. Boom. Boom.  _ And then the almost soothing sting of my skin falling apart under the surface, like I’m a snowglobe, all shaken up inside.

 

I can’t figure out an argument in time to stop her next rainstorm of worries. “I didn’t believe you when you said this wouldn’t happen. I should’ve made you come with me.”

 

And maybe I should’ve, but I don’t wanna impose on her. Or Louis. I feel that somehow I would’ve made their enjoyable weekend uncomfortable, whether it’s because of the reason I’m there or otherwise.

 

I run my thumb under the bandage surrounding my head.

 

“And for two whole fucking days. Two days you had to spend with these people? Fuck.” Her crying worsens. Her cries: louder. Her sniffling: louder.

 

“I never have to see them again,” I say, eyeing the boxes cluttering my room.

 

“That doesn’t undo the fact that half of your face is beaten to a pulp,” she says.

 

I press my index to the bruise on my cheek, wincing at the pain. “This is gonna go away, Clem. It’s not forever.”

“It still fucking sucks!” she says.

 

And somehow I feel like It’s my fault this happened in the first place.

 

If I’d just kept my mouth shut…

 

Pretended I have a boyfriend.

 

Or would he have found a different reason to beat me? There’s probably more of them.

 

Maybe if I just didn’t exist-

 

“-Can you even see out of that eye?” Clementine paces back and forth, occasionally throwing her head back.

 

“I’m sure I can,” I say.

 

“You haven’t checked?!”

 

I don’t answer, instead picking at the bandaids she’s already put on my thumbs. I’ve already checked, though.

 

“Check.”

 

“I’m only checking if you look away,” I say, crossing my arms.

 

“Fine,” she says, turning toward Brody’s bed.

 

“I’ll tell you when to look,” I say.

 

Despite having already been through this before, it still startles me. I unwrap the bandage and comb my hair down with my fingers on instinct, opening my eyes. Opening my eyes. Opening my eyes? It’s like my right eye is stuck shut. I try opening it again and it’s still like that, so I take my index and go to feel whatever is gluing my eyelid shut, but I end up poking my eye itself. I see nothing.

 

I close both eyes again and hold my finger on the left lid to keep it shut while I open the right, and again. It’s like it’s glued shut. I poke my eye. There’s nothing there. Not even black; it’s just nothing.

 

“Fuck. Violet, you can’t see, can you?” Her shoulders are tense.

 

“I’ll be fine,” I say, but I don’t even believe it. This isn’t just gonna go away. I’m fucked.

 

“Fuck. That’s a no,” she says, starting to turn around but stopping herself, “isn’t it? Fuckfuckfuck. This is so fucked.”

 

“Clem, I’m gonna be fine,” I repeat, wrapping the bandage around my head again. I ball my sheets in my hands. “I promise. Turn around.”

 

It’s like I’m a spelunker and every time I lie to her another pebble falls on top of me until I realize I’m closed in by a boulder.

 

She faces me and starts crying hard again. She puts her hands on her hips, looking out the window. Looking back at me. At the boxes. At me.

 

“I want to help you,” I say. I didn’t even cry this hard when he beat me. It’s like she’s making up all the crying for me.

 

“And  _ I  _ want to help  _ you, _ ” she says, gesturing to my face. “But I don’t know how. I can’t make it go away.”

 

“You’re right. You can’t.”

 

“Have you seen a doctor?”

 

I raise my eyebrows at her incredulously.

 

She just looks at me, bites her lip, and smiles through it. “I’m an idiot.”

 

“And why’s that?”

 

She shakes her head.

 

And then we’re looking at each other again. I’ve seen my face after what happened. I’m bruised. The bandage is almost too big for my head and I look like I’ve had surgery, or maybe like I still need it. But she looks at me with this smile. Not even just a smile with her mouth, but her eyes smile, too. She’s finally able to breathe, and she breathes like she’s sleeping. The air moves through her as though the air were breathing her and not the other way around. 

 

I feel like I’m growing roots and being planted in this moment. Being planted with all the boxes, sitting a foot from where Clementine’s standing, and Clementine’s being rooted, and we’re statues with flowers growing out of our cracks and despite being injured she looks at me like I’m cut from marble. If this weren’t a terrible time to kiss her, I would.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says.

 

“Why?”

 

She breathes. In. Out. “There’s nothing wrong with your face.”

 

“You didn’t say there was,” I say.

 

She swishes air around her mouth. “I could’ve implied it.”

 

“Oh.”

 

And I feel like literal scum of the earth that Clementine feels the need to apologize to me when she is the only thing holding me together right now.

 

“But you’re still beautiful,” she says, her eyes darting around the room. The boxes. At me. Out the window. At me.

 

“...beautiful?”

 

“I’m always too forward,” she says, shaking her head. “Sorry.”

 

“No, you just apologize too much,” I say.

 

She smiles. I smile.

 

And she’s not too forward. Actually, I wish she were  _ more  _ forward. Not just with her words but with her mouth, with her hands, with her fingers and maybe even her nails, with her breaths and the things she whispers- all the little things she says to me- with the soft thud of fabric on the floor.

 

When I’m done looking at her I find myself looking at the boxes. She notices.

 

I speak first. “This is really it.”

 

She looks at the boxes, too.

 

“The culmination of my being lies in these boxes. I’m surprised I even have  _ this _ much shit,” I say, picking at the bandaids. “Thought my parents wouldn’t hold onto anything.”

 

“What are you gonna do with it?” she asks.

 

“Probably end up throwing half of it out, taking half with me,” I say. “I don’t really need any of it to begin with.”

 

“Why’d you take it, then?”

 

“I don’t want them having any of my stuff,” I say.

 

She nods. Then she looks at me, her gaze glazed over. “I really want this to work out,” she says, almost speaking past me.

 

I smile at one corner of my mouth. “You have no idea how much I want this to work out.”

 

“I have some idea,” she says, gesturing to the boxes.

 

I know her idea of ‘how much’ is more like a drop in the ocean of how much I want this to work out. I would bottle up the entire ocean and take it to the moon if it meant I could be with this girl.

 

With every passing minute my heartbeat grows stronger. My hands start to sweat and no breath feels like enough air. I can’t help but see flashes of red hair flitting in the forefront of my mind.

 

“I’m sorry I haven’t come out to you yet,” Clementine says, sitting on the edge of Brody’s bed.

 

I think about calling her out for apologizing again but I settle on comforting her. “I said you can come out whenever you’re ready.”

 

“I know, but it’s been a whole weekend since then. Like. You’d think I would’ve done it by now.”

 

“Well, why haven’t you, then?” I ask.

 

She stares holes into a box beside me. “I’m not ready yet.”

 

“Well then,” I say. “You will when you’re ready.”

 

“I just don’t know why I’m not ready,” she says, swishing air around her mouth. “You’d think I’d be really excited to tell you and all. And I am, but I’m just… not ready.”

 

“Is it because you’re not comfortable with me?” I ask.

 

“No! No, not at all,” she says. “I just feel like, when I wanna say it, I’ll know. And then I will.”

 

I nod my head at her, unsure of why she’s saying all this. 

 

“I just feel like I owe it to you, after everything,” she says.

 

“You don’t owe me anything, Clem,” I say.

 

Her brows knit together. Her eyes swing like a pendulum between me and the boxes. “I wanna tell you something.”

 

I shake my head. “Clem, I just told you you don’t have to come out to me until you’re ready.”

 

She looks like she’s about to say something but ends up just squeaking out an “okay.”

 

I’m reminded of how it felt to have her wrapped around me in bed a couple days ago. How much I needed it while I was with my parents. In the past I used to cry because I didn’t know why they hurt me, or what I did to deserve it, when everyone else I knew had parents who wouldn’t lay a finger on them. Now I just cry because it hurts.

 

“I don’t want you to have to do your project with Minnie,” Clementine says, looking up at me from behind her eyelashes.

 

“It’s less of us doing our project and more of her just tapping away at her keyboard and staring at me, most of the time,” I say, playing with my hands in my lap.

 

“I’m afraid she’s gonna hurt your eye.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I don’t want her to,” she says.

 

“Weirdly enough, that’s not what I’m worried about.”

 

What I’m more worried about is me getting more fucked up, not because it would cause me to be in more pain or cause me to be more blind, but because my pain would in turn hurt Clementine and seeing her in pain just makes it hurt worse and then we’re plummeting towards Earth holding onto each other as though that’s not the very thing that’s making us fall faster.

 

Clementine looks up at me again before the door bursts open. Minnie doesn’t ever fucking knock. She struts in and sits next to Clementine as Clementine’s eyes follow her and takes out her laptop, beginning to work, failing to even acknowledge Clementine’s existence as Clementine darts her vision back to me and waits for me to tell her what to do.

 

“I got this,” I whisper, and she looks at Minnie. The boxes. Me.

 

She nods and tiptoes out of the room as though the floor were littered with glass.

 

And I wonder why I cry because I need to know why Minnie does it, and not just because it hurts. I wonder why the uncertainty of it all doesn’t sit comfortable with me or why I want to know whatever superficial, insufficient answer or excuse she gives me. I wonder why I think any answer I get would make me reevaluate the situation in any substantial way, but here I am with a lump in my throat.

 

“So,” Minerva says, as soon as the door clicks closed.

 

“So what?” I say.

 

“You kissed her yet?”

 

I scowl. “What the fuck, Minnie?”

 

She just looks at me in a blank stare.

 

“You can’t just say shit like that,” I say, readjusting the bandage. “It’s none of your business.”

 

She just snorts and continues to type. I wish Clementine were here, even if she’s just sitting on the edge of the bed, saying nothing. Even if I’m just imagining kissing her the whole time. How my lips fit against hers, how she pushes me further into the mattress, how she starts to open her mouth and I slide my tongue in-

 

-Fuck. 

 

In some odd way Minerva reminds me of my dad in the way she plans her assault. The look in her eyes as she thinks of every step she’d gonna take to reach the conclusion with surgical precision. Smiling as she arrives at details. Her forehead creasing between her eyes as she works out the kinks. Heat rising to her cheeks because the danger of it all gets her off.

 

“Oh, Minerva, no,” I say, almost feeling my heartbeat exit my mouth as she slides her laptop off of her lap and onto the bed next to her.

 

“No what?”

 

I glare at her, and I imagine my nostrils as flared as hers are right now. As she stands up. As she plasters her trademark grin to her face. 

 

“No, don’t walk over here and touch me,” I say, crossing my legs.

 

She takes a step closer, looking me up and down. “What are you gonna do about it, then?”

 

I groan, trying to cover my terror with anything I can muster. “You know I can’t do shit because you’re just gonna take the easy way out and fuck with my bad eye, so you doing this now just makes it worse.”

 

“So you’ll do nothing?” she asks.

 

“Nothing,” I say. “So what do you get out of it? Out of doing this to me?”

 

She takes a half-step back, scratching at her thigh. “...what?” She says it as though she wouldn’t expect me to have any questions. As though her touching me makes perfect sense.

 

“If I don’t fight, what satisfaction does it give you?” I ask.

 

She loses the spark of sultry she had gleaming in her eyes and grin earlier and now it’s just anger. She speaks through grit teeth. “Why can’t you just let me have this, Violet?” she asks, with frustration dripping on every word.

 

“ _ Have what? _ My body? My undying love?” I uncross my legs. Why do I feel…? Confident?

 

“This,” she repeats on exhale, her expression falling flat on the floor and shattering to a million pieces.

 

And then that’s when I feel  _ everything  _ shattering to a million pieces, and the fabric of my world changes, and I realize I have an opening. I’ve caught something in her I wasn’t supposed to see and now she’s falling.

 

“What do you want? Do you  _ want  _ me to want this?”

 

“No, I-”

 

“Do you think I don’t get  _ enough?”  _

 

Her gaze is only broken by her blinking.

 

“Do you think my eye got fucked up out of nowhere, Minerva? Do you think I don’t already have problems besides you?”

 

Her stance drops and she sulks over beside me. Why am I talking to her, of all people? Why aren’t I talking to Clementine about this shit?

 

“He beat me, Minnie. My dad. My own father, because his daughter is a dyke. Mom did nothing. This is why I don’t leave the school. When I go home, that’s what I get, and I guarantee it’s ten times worse than you could ever do. All these boxes?” I say, gesturing around the room. “This is everything I own. I have nowhere to go. And you think that- fucking-  _ raping  _ me and beating me up is doing anything other than making my life hell?”

 

Her chest rises and falls, her eyes wide open as though she were staring at her own entrails. 

 

“And you’re fucking lucky I’m not doing anything about this, because you’d be locked away in a much worse place than Ericson’s. Do you understand?”

 

“Understand what?”

 

“Understand that I’m being much better than I could be,” I say, launching myself to the center of the room before she can change her mind and put her hands on me. “You could be a registered sex offender. You could go to jail. Do you get it?”

 

“Why are you saying all of this?”

 

_ Because it hurts you. _

 

“Because all I ask is that you answer one question and that’s all you have to do.”

 

“...or you’ll report me?”

 

_ Or I’ll twist the knife. _

 

“No,” I say, taking a step backward as she straightens her back. “This is just a chance to prove you have even a shred of humanity left in you.”

 

She regains her flared nostrils, quirking her eyebrows at the floor. “Do you think I don’t face this, too?”

 

My nails are digging into my palms. “Face… what?”

 

Her eyes could light the place on fire, icy as they are. “Do you think I stay here because I fucking want to? Or do you think  _ maybe  _ I stay here because my family fucking sucks?”

 

I don’t want to stand here and listen to her sob story, but I stay at the possibility that she’ll let up and tell me.

 

“My dad beats me too, Violet. And do you know how fucking  _ hard  _ it is?”

 

I bite my bottom lip almost hard enough to draw blood. “Of course I know how hard it is. Have you forgotten the gigantic fucking bandage around my head?”

 

“You don’t have siblings.”

 

How’d she know that?

 

“ _ And?”  _ I ask.

 

“I was the only one who would get beaten.”

 

I stand my ground. “Why?”

 

I’ve never seen Minerva cry before. Maybe when we were kids and someone took her crayon or something, but never as a technical adult. Her face scrunches up and she tries to hide it but it just makes it worse, her tears dampen the wrinkles she’s created of her skin, and her bottom lip quivers.

 

Her eyes search around the room for her answer even though she already knows it. I stand there as she steps closer and closer, hoping that whatever answer I get is worth letting her get this close.

 

And, fuck- it is.

 

“Sophie’s not gay.”

 

My heart thuds on the floor and all the blood rushes to my face. I feel like it’s all gonna start pouring out of my eye socket and fill the room until we’re just drowning together, because that’s kind of what this situation calls for.

 

“You’re gay?” I ask. The words tumble off my tongue like I never though I’d need to ask her that. That it should be curly brown hair and brown eyes in front of me and not fire and stone.

 

Her eyes pan up my face, meet my gaze, and then she forces her eyes to somewhere else in the room as her forehead wrinkles between her brows. As her breathing goes uncontrolled, her shoulders rising and falling with it; as she steps side to side like she’s not sure where to run. Like she’s not sure she can find whatever she needs to say in order to make this situation bearable.

 

My torrent of questions fills the room. “What the  _ fuck? _ You do this despite knowing how much it fucking blows to be a lesbian? To be hurt? To be fucking confused and scared and… What the hell were you thinking?” I ask, shouting.

 

“You don’t get to take the easy way out,  _ Violet. _ ”

 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

 

She scans the floor, crinkling her nose and baring her teeth in a scowl. “I was only thirteen.”

 

I figure it obsolete to even ask her what she’s talking about.

 

“Do you know how terrifying it is? How painful?”

 

“Um,  _ yes, _ ” I say, assuming; my nails digging into my palms. “I just got done telling you my dad beats me.”

 

“No. I’m not talking about that,” she says, drawing out her vowels as an implicit way of telling me that I don’t understand her.

 

“You don’t know what it’s like,” she says, gritting her teeth again.

 

So she must be talking about something I haven’t gone through. And she’s put me through everything, so what?

 

She slouches, clenching and unclenching her fists at her sides, huffing out her breath like a steam engine and all I can do is just stand here and listen. Feeling like I’m about to be fucking schooled; like she’s gonna drop a nuclear bomb on my world.

 

“To be thirteen, not even know how sex works- and, fuck- every fucking night. He’d come into my room…” she says.

 

Oh, fuck. She pulled the pin out of the bomb with her  _ teeth _ .

 

“And my own twin sister never got it because she wasn’t a fucking dyke like me. Do you know how that…” 

 

I swallow past the lump in my throat and try not to fuck up my own breathing just because hers is.

 

“...and she’d just look away and pretend I wasn’t screaming or trying to get away.”

 

I just stand there, mouth closed, eyes wide, unmoving.

 

“My own fucking dad.”

 

She steps back.

 

“Do you know…”

 

She steps forward.

 

“...how fucking…”

 

She steps forward. 

 

“... _ Humiliating _ …”

 

She steps forward.

 

“...Dehumanizing…”

 

She stops.

 

I interrupt. “ _ Yes,” _ I say, nearly closing the gap between us. “You’ve  _ done it to me. _ ”

 

“Exactly,” she says, as I watch a tear drip down the length of her face.

 

And I guess I’ve got my answer.

 

“All this…” I say. “All this. Because you think everyone deserves to feel the way you do?”

 

She shakes her head so subtly that I barely catch it. “No,” she says. She looks right through me. “I don’t deserve to be the only one.”

 

“Fuck, Minnie,” I say, smoothing out my hair again. “You don’t see me going around raping people just because you’ve done it to me,” I say.

 

“...What?”

 

“You could’ve used the opportunity to help keep other people from being hurt but instead you go fucking feral and destroy people’s lives here and there, and for  _ what? _ ”

 

She swallows, staring into the ground as though she’s gonna find something other than carpet. And I have the upper hand again. She wasn’t expecting me to see past her. Perfect Minnie.

 

“What do you get from it? Does it even feel good, to leave me… fuck, me and Clementine there crying and naked and scared?”

 

“No,” she whispers. 

 

“Does it feel good when you go back to your dorm afterward and think about it in front of whoever you’re rooming with? What? Does it make you feel accomplished?”

 

“Satisfied?”

 

She steps closer.

 

“Fulfilled?”

 

She steps closer.

 

“Are you proud of yourself when you-”

 

And then it happens again. Not how I wanted it. With a tear down my face, the taste of salt in my mouth, and with her holding me, somehow, some way; this time with her hands on my face. 

 

Her lips full on mine.

 

Kissing me gently at first, like she’s not even aware she’s doing it. Forcing a breath out of her nose before withdrawing, resting forehead to forehead, catching her breath as if she had a reason to lose it.

 

“Fuck,” she whispers. 

 

_ Fuck,  _ I think, feeling so above her that getting her to stop would be like standing on her head in the deep end of the pool.

 

She runs one of her hands from my cheek to the back of my neck and presses her lips to mine again, and I don’t close my eyes. She closes hers, practically melting, as though she were actually made of sickeningly sweet sugar and I’m water and I’m dissolving her; her taste like rock candy, and when she notices I’m not reciprocating she just kisses me harder. 

 

I hate myself for allowing it to happen for so long, same as how I allow her to do everything else she does to me. And the point at which I stop her is when she whimpers and her tongue slips past my lips.

 

I also hate myself for feeling bad for her when I slap her and push her away from me and she just cries harder.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so, so sorry.”

 

“What was that for?” I ask.

 

She winces. “You’re just so…”

 

She steps back.

 

“Fuck, I…”

 

She steps forward.

 

“I mean…”

 

She steps forward.

 

“S-shit.”

 

She closes in on me.

 

“I have a crush on you, don’t I?”

 

She shakes her hands at her sides like she were flinging water off of them and squeezes her eyes shut before she tilts her head last second and kisses me again, this time putting her hands on my hips and pulling me into her, but I react, pushing her away and slapping her again.

 

“No,” I say, catching my breath.

 

“No what?” she asks.

 

“No, you don’t get to be sorry,” I say. “No, you don’t get to have a  _ crush on me,”  _ I continue. “No, you don’t get to kiss me like you haven’t destroyed me already.”

 

She cradles her own arms in front of her. “Please-”

 

“Leave,” I say, stepping out of her pathway. “Now.”

 

“Violet-”

 

“-Why did you apologize to me?” I ask, raising my voice.

 

“...what?” she asks.

 

“Why’d you apologize to me after you kissed me just now?”

 

Because I have no idea why. Is she apologizing for the rape? For kissing me? For having a crush on me? Was she planning on doing something to me after she kissed me?

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Then leave,” I say.

 

“ _ Violet-” _

 

“-I said now.” I grab her by her wrist and sling her out of the room, slamming the door behind her, locking it, and imagine her waiting on the other side, pressing her hand up to the door like a mime before she turns the corner in her dramatic fashion she tries on for everything.

 

Her taste still in my mouth.

 

And I throw myself up against the door, starting to cry, but I can’t keep it going. My sobs come without tears and it’s as though I’m trying to make myself cry; because I am. I need to. This whole situation is fucked; she’s trying to be nice now? She has a crush on me? I can’t  _ not  _ cry about this. It’d be fucked up of me.

 

It hurts. It stings, like scraping your nails over a sunburn; it’s raw and it’s visceral and I feel like screaming. Like throwing up. Like going over to wherever she rooms and beating her till I can’t anymore; like destroying the whole school and everything that’s ever reminded me of it; like finding a new place to be where nobody knows Clementine and I and we can just exist.

 

And I turn around and slide my back down the door, peeking over at all the boxes and at the window and at myself until I stumble across her laptop, still lying on the bed.

 

I suppose this makes an opportune moment to go explain what happened to Clementine and ask her where Minnie stays. I scoop up the computer in my arms and look around the hall to make sure I don’t find any concerned people, but by now I guess they’re used to hearing people cry. 

 

The door is cracked open so I stand there for a moment debating whether I should knock. Instead I take a breath, anticipating seeing Clementine, and I do. But I also see Minnie, curled up in fetal position on the bed adjacent Clementine’s.

 

I stand there facing Clementine, face equally as pallid as mine probably is, until I snap back into reality and step into the room, placing the laptop on a table, and get close enough to her so I can whisper.

 

“Do you want me to get her to leave?” I ask.

 

She shakes her head no.

 

“Why not?” I ask.

 

She takes a step closer. “This is what I wanted to tell you earlier,” she says.

 

“What?”

 

“She’s my roomate,” she says.

 

And like so many times before my heart is on the floor, and I look down like I’m staring at it and anticipating my impending death. I can barely swallow; I just stand there and feel all the blood rising to my cheeks, prickling my face, and worry I’m finally gonna vomit.

 

I take her hand and pull her out of the room, shutting the door behind us, not caring if it startles Minerva, and make it to the stairs. Up every staircase I grow a bit more calm with Clementine’s hand in mine, walking out some of these nerves, and then we make it to the ladder. 

 

I look behind myself to see why she’s not going anywhere and see her staring at the floor; crying.

 

“I’m sorry. I should’ve told you sooner,” she says.

 

I take a step toward her, taking her other hand. “It’s okay. You tried to and I shut you down.”

 

“I should’ve pressed you.”

 

I shake my head at her, guiding her toward the ladder.

 

We sit down facing each other and I rest my chin in my hands. The sun dares to begin to set amongst a sky, gradient like a tropical drink with a slice of lemon. The air smells like rain, it’s just cool enough to endure, and it feels inappropriate to be talking about Minnie again in such a beautiful place.

 

I wanna be talking about Clementine, all the things she likes, what she was like as a kid, all her favorite activities and all the crushes she’s had and what they were all like and if she likes the beach and if she’d like to go with me sometime and everything that  _ isn’t  _ Minnie, but I feel like this has to be said.

 

“She tried to kiss me,” I say.

 

She licks her lips to wet them. “She tried to kiss you?!” she asks, scooting closer to me, as if I have to be quieter.

 

“Well,” I say, scratching behind my ear. “She  _ did  _ kiss me. Three times, I guess. But I stopped her and kicked her out.”

 

“That’s insane,” she says, tucking a curl into her hat. “Why?”

 

“That’s the crazy part. She says she has a crush on me,” I say.

 

She shakes her head, her eye contact unwavering. “She’s gay?”

 

“Apparently. Has she told you…”

 

“Told me what?”

 

“Why she does what she does,” I say, avoiding looking at her.

 

“Vaguely. But she was drunk and I didn’t believe her. She told  _ you? _ ”

 

“Can I repeat it to you?”

 

“Yes,” she says.

 

“She told me her dad’s been raping her since she was, like, thirteen.”

 

“Fuck-”

 

“-every night,” I interrupt.

 

And for whatever reason my continuation triggers her into hysteria. She looks around the deck as though there’s other people there, unsure of where to go. She stands up, sits back down, hums to herself in a panic, takes off her hat, and pulls on her pigtails.

 

“Clem, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you-”

 

“-I have to tell you something,” she says, crying like she was before.

 

It seems like all we do together now is cry. If we could collect all the tears we’ve shed this week together, we’d have a bathtub to drown ourselves in. If I could count all the times I wanted to kiss her but couldn’t, I’d have enough kisses un-kissed to exhaust us for the next week we spend together. 

 

I take her hands. “You can tell me.”

 

She shakes her head. Bites her lip. “You know how Minnie and I room together?”

 

I feel all the salt in my body being ready to flood my eyes. 

 

“And I never told you where it happens.”

 

She moves closer. Her face so close. And I think she’s going to correct herself and back up a bit but she doesn’t. That’s how I realize what she’s trying to do.

 

“It happens in our room,” she says. “When she rapes me.”

 

She scoots closer, tightening her grip on my hand. She’s giving herself the courage, scanning all around my face, probably looking for my reaction. If I back away or if I’m uncomfortable. But I don’t, and I’m not.

 

“And it hasn’t just happened once or twice,” she continues.

 

Despite her crying harder, she scoots closer. Our knees are touching. Her breathing is ragged and uneven and she’s frayed at the edges and I know that her mind is just buzzing with the questions, “what the fuck is going on, what am I doing,” because  _ my _ mind is, especially when I close my eyes and don’t open them to see if she’s closed hers, too.

 

“It’s happened almost every night for the past month, except when I went to Louis’s,” she says, squeaking out the second part of the sentence, like it pains her to say it.

 

She touches her forehead to mine and the only things I’m aware of is what she just told me, her hands in mine, her knees on mine, her forehead on mine, my pounding heart, my face red with blush, and I prepare myself for her lips to be on mine.

 

I close my eyes and I can feel her head tilt, and I sense maybe a tentative brush of lips on lips, although it could just as easily be a gust of air. And I wait. As my hands begin to sweat with the heat outside just as much as nervousness. As I think of all the times I wanted this to happen and how it would’ve gone, flashing in my head; as I take a breath and hold it.

 

But she just wails and shoves her head into my shoulder, and I don’t stop being nervous.

 

“I’m so fucking sorry,” she says.

 

“Don’t be.”

 

“I want to, I’m just not ready,” she says.

 

I feel stupid for asking, but I do anyway. “Want to what?”

 

She breaths and mumbles out, “Kiss you,” nuzzling her nose into my shoulder.

 

“I want to, too,” I say.

 

“Good,” she says. “I still feel like shit because I can’t.”

 

“I want you to be ready.”

 

“I wanna be ready faster,” she cries.

 

I knead her palms with my thumbs. “I didn’t know Minnie hurt you that much,” I say.

 

And like so many other times today I feel like I need to vomit.

 

“It’s been every night. And hearing that the same thing happened to her just makes it worse,” she says into my shirt.

 

“I didn’t mean to make you feel worse,” she says.

 

“It’s fine,” she mumbles, squeezing my hands again, and rests her head on my shoulder. “It’s just like… why? She knows how much it sucks; why would she do it to us?”

 

“She hates herself,” I say.

 

“That’s it?!” she says, too loud for talking but too quiet for yelling.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Like, that’s her reasoning. That’s the reason. I want it to mean something,” she says, scooting closer. Wrapping her legs around me. “I mean, it just feels so dumb. My life is permanently fucked up because  _ she hates herself? _ That’s not even my problem,” she finishes.

 

“I agree with you,” I say. And I do.

 

You’d think you’d need some sort of world-bending reason to hurt someone as much as she’s hurt Clementine. Hurt us both. Like someone was holding a gun to her head or the universe is gonna collapse for her to even be remotely okay with doing something like that, but she is.

 

“How do you know she’s telling the truth, though?” she asks, her chin on my shoulder.

 

“What reason would she have to lie?”

 

“To make us feel bad for her,” she says.

 

“Why would she need us to feel bad for her? I told her I wasn’t gonna tell anybody.”

 

“I don’t know,” she says, scooting back and unwrapping her legs from around me. “Maybe it’s just another way for her to control us.”

 

“But why would she need to lie? Can’t she just say she does it because she likes it?”

 

“She doesn’t like it, though,” Clementine says.

 

“She told me that, too,” I say.

 

“It makes no sense, then. I feel like shit because it makes no fuckin’ sense. This was never supposed to be our lives.” She looks me in the eyes as our tears well up for the hundredth time.

 

Is this what it looks like when you’re drowning?

 

I take off my sweatshirt and she follows because she knows we’re gonna do our sweatshirt pillow thing, and we lie down next to each other and just ignore the fact that our faces are wet from sweat and tears and that half of my face is a construction site.

 

“She apologized to me,” I say, tangling my legs in hers. “After she kissed me.”

 

“Because she kissed you?” she asks. “Like, she apologized for kissing you?”

 

“I don’t know. I asked her and I pressed her on it but she wouldn’t tell me.” 

 

She takes my hand as she sniffles. “It all makes no fuckin’ sense. She hasn’t apologized to me for anything.”

 

“Her apologies mean nothing anyway.”

 

“Yeah,” she says, fluffing up her sweatshirt under her. “But why’s she touching me if she doesn’t have a crush on me? Isn’t that the reason she’s touching you?”

 

“She’s touching us because we’re gay,” I say, wiping a tear from her cheek. “She kissed me because she likes me, apparently.”

 

“You can’t like someone and rape them at the same time.”

 

“I know,” I answer. “But in her own fucked up sense of love, she likes me,” I say.

 

Clementine just scoots closer and presses her forehead to mine, and it’s more soothing and less nerve-wracking now that she has no intention of kissing me.

 

“Hey, Clem.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“If you never figure out why she does it,” I say, “or if it never makes sense, do you think you’ll be okay with that?”

 

“I don’t know,” she says.

 

And that’s the last thing she says to me tonight, even as she puts on my clothes and we go to bed, and I feel like the silence is just another way of her telling me she loves and trusts me. As we pull the covers up over us and ignore all the sounds in the hallway, as she pulls herself into me and starts to fall asleep.

 

Even though I’m in one of the rooms I’ve been raped in, I don’t think about it as much as you’d expect. I don’t picture myself going through it as I expected I would, and I don’t feel like she’s gonna burst in at any moment. I feel safe with Clementine around me like a protective barrier and just know, somehow, that Minnie’s gonna lay off for tonight.

 

I’m left with a different impression of her. I don’t feel so small, and at the same time I feel so insignificant. Like a jam in the gears of her universe is all it takes for her to destroy us, even for a little while. 

 

I’m holding and being held, feeling her heartbeat through my back, getting too hot but staying under the covers because she’s still cold; I figure, if this is plummeting toward Earth and carrying the burden of two people all at once, I don’t hate it.

 

It feels right.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurt people hurt people.


	6. on her video, baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want you to,” I whisper.
> 
> I worry that Minnie’s fucked us up too much, and that all I’m gonna be thinking about is her fire red hair and the way her tongue invaded my mouth. That I’m gonna back away and be staring into Minnie’s puffy, reddened eyes; that I’ve touched myself to the thought of this moment so many times and all it amounts to is another obstacle to overcome.
> 
> “I’m scared,” she whispers.
> 
>  
> 
> youll never guess what happens next :O

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found a girl, and she's gorgeous and she makes me giggle and smile and I love her already and I feel stupid for that because I don't know her THAT well. But I wanna know everything, and I wanna spend time together, and I just... feel it.
> 
> MUCH LIKE VI AND CLEM! :D
> 
> Ahhh I want to write out my explanations for everything in the beginning notes because I feel like nobody reads the ending notes but I can't because I'll spoil you but ANYWAY!
> 
> Think back to your first crush, or maybe the past song recommendation, Bitch by Allie X, and how they MADE YOU THEIR FUCKING BITCH! And you just can't do anything about it. You're at their will. They're dangling you by a thread and you don't bother holding on for dear life because you completely trust them not to cut you down, and that's where their relationship is at! HENCE THE SONG RECOMMENDATION
> 
> Untitled God Song: Haley Heynderickx 
> 
> BECAUSE! Violet's put Clementine on a pedestal for better or worse and that's where she'll stay, in the spotlight of Violet's mind, with a blue ribbon on her breast.
> 
> Without further ado. Ps read the ending notes.

_ Thump thump thump. _

 

My heart throws itself against my walls. I’m already making an exit plan. Leave and find Clementine. 

 

So maybe Minerva was right when she called Clementine my knight in shining armor. Maybe I am leaving the classroom and shouting down the halls as Minerva follows me out because I’m hoping Clementine leaves class and beats the fuck out of Minnie because I know I’m not strong enough to do it myself.

 

“CLEMENTINE?!” I shout, looking behind me to see Minnie closing in on me. I speed up and she does, too.

 

But Clementine doesn’t come out of her classroom. I just hear shouting on the other side of the door, and I don’t get a good enough look through the window before Minnie’s fist collides with the side of my head from behind me.

 

“You fucking cunt,” she says, as I’m scrambling on the floor. 

 

Everything is dizzy. The colors all smear together and everything sounds like it’s in a tunnel. My first thought is Clementine.

 

“You didn’t do your part of the project, and we  _ failed, _ ” she says, standing over me, “because you were too busy with your _ FUCKING GIRLFRIEND _ .”

 

“We  _ failed  _ because you were too busy  _ raping me,”  _ I say in a hushed whisper.

 

A door across the hall opens and a burst of people exit, some staying behind the door, others getting closer.

 

“Oh, so you  _ didn’t  _ run off to be with her more than half the time?” she says, stepping closer.

 

“Maybe I fucking needed her after what you did to me,” I say, scooting myself backwards.

 

“We  _ failed.  _ Do you know what this means?” she asks, kneeling on the floor, getting closer to me all the while.

 

I don’t even consider standing back up.

 

“This means I’m not going to fucking college,” she says, too quiet for anyone except me to hear.

 

Her face is completely overgrown with anger. I’ve never seen her this angry. I know anything I say to her is going to go right past her, like her ears are black holes that sound gets lost in, and everything for her is distorted, much like how it is for me. She doesn’t notice the people filing up. She doesn’t notice the tears dripping from her eyes.

 

My second thought is my eye, and the fact that this is the perfect opportunity for her to fuck it up more, so I drape my hand over it as if that’s gonna help at all. 

 

“Neither am I, dipshit,” I say.

 

“And guess what else?” she says, clearly ignoring me, as I use my legs to scoot myself farther back, but she just crawls after me like a baby chasing candy, and I never knew something like that could be so terrifying.

 

“You told your little girlfriend I kissed you,” she says.

 

And I expect it to hurt when she straddles me and holds her hands together high in the air, ready to pound down on my face.

 

“You know how I know?” she asks.

 

I feel small for playing back, but I shake my head no as if any answer would justify what she’s doing.

 

“Because she told someone, who told someone else, who told someone else, and now everybody knows.”

 

As if she could raise her hands higher, she reaches. For something hanging from the ceiling? For God? For nothing. 

 

When she beats my face, I don’t feel anything. It’s like poking at your cheek after getting it numbed at the dentist. It’s gummy and puffy and I feel like I don’t exist; some sort of dream state.

 

_ Boom _

 

She raises her arms again and lands on the side of my face, as I tried to turn it, and all I see is red. Red through my bad eye, red of her hair, red of her skin- of her rage- and red on her hands.

 

_ Boom _

 

“I have to go back to my  _ parents, _ ” she says.

 

_ Boom _

 

“My  _ dad,” _ she says.

 

_ Boom _

 

“And you know  _ exactly  _ what he’s gonna do to me while I’m there.”

 

_ Boom _

 

“AND IT’S  _ YOUR  _ FUCKING FAULT,” she says, and I can’t tell if it’s my blood or her tears dripping on my face.

 

“Minnie, stop,” someone says from behind. “She’s had enough.” But they don’t come and help, whoever it is, because they know full well that she’s the strongest girl in this school.

 

My hands are splayed at my sides and I don’t bother trying to hit her because I know she’s just gonna use it as leverage somehow. Girl’s gotten in enough fights to know how it works and she’s hurt me enough that I know I can’t stop it.

 

_ Boom _

 

“Minnie, enough,” another voice says, unless it’s just my hearing being distorted.

 

I assume it’s tears because my face doesn’t hurt enough for it to be blood. That, and her punches are getting weaker, and knowing her, it’s not because she doesn’t have stamina.

 

She straddles me with all her weight; all from muscle and height.

 

“AND,”

 

_ Boom _

 

“I’M,”

 

_ Bump _

 

“NOT,”

 

_ Bump _

 

“Strong…”

 

_ Bump _

 

“Enough… to stop him…”

 

_ Tap _

 

She holds her hands up to hit me again, and I see now that it was tears  _ and  _ a copious amount of blood, and I taste the iron like rust. See the blood like rust, the hair like rust, and I’m filling up with rust and I can’t move as she moves her hands instead to her face and starts sobbing.

 

All everyone does is watch her as I lie there in a daze, like I’ve just woken up from surgery. And I can feel that the bandage isn’t doing enough now as my eye starts pounding, like it has an individual heartbeat, and there’s pins and needles in the bloodstream.

 

“I can’t…”

 

“Fuck.”

 

“I just…”

 

She removes her hands from her face and looks at the blood dripping off of it, her expression going blank, and then she searches around the hall, noticing the entourage she’s summoned. Back at her hands. At the people. Then my face.

 

“Holy fuck,” she says.

 

And, not quite on cue, but someone comes up from behind her and pulls her by her hair, and like everything else, it’s all a flash of red and everything is blurry. As though I’m watching this unfold from behind a foggy window on a slowly moving train, my brain taking ages to catch up like I’m one hundred yards behind everything.

 

My eye. I move my hand to touch it and I just feel pulp, like the inside of a pumpkin. But it aches, and there are no seeds. Just the slimey remains of the side of my face and a small layer of gauze, hanging on pathetically.

 

Minnie, across the floor, getting her ass handed to her, and I can’t think of anyone strong enough to do that as I watch someone land punches from both hands on each side of her face in succession. Heh. I hope the blood on her hands is because Minnie’s been busted open like a pinata and not because she already had my blood on her face. This girl with brown hair. Pigtails.

 

Oh, fuck.

 

Clementine.

 

Just as I realize this, Minnie gets a hold on her neck and she starts trying to scream but nothing’s coming out.

 

“ _ CLEMENTINE!” _

 

I’m able to prop myself up and shift to my knees, and I sort of crawl over there, digging my nails into Minnie’s arms until she lets go, and Clementine gets off from on top of her, clearly having had enough already, catching her breath and heaving like she’s been underwater.

 

But I don’t move.

 

“ _ Don’t fucking TOUCH HER,”  _ I shout, bringing my hands up over my head, just as she did, as Clementine stands off to the side. But Minnie’s arms are just lying next to her as she continues to sob.

 

_ Boom _

 

_ “DON’T FUCKING TOUCH HER,” _

 

_ Boom _

 

_ “DON’T” _

 

_ Boom _

 

_ “FUCKING” _

 

_ Boom _

 

_ “TOUCH” _

 

_ Boom _

 

_ “HER” _

 

_ Boom _

 

_ “EVER” _

 

_ Boom _

 

_ “AGAIN” _

 

_ Boom _

 

I look back down at her face and her eyes are closed, peacefully, almost like she’s sleeping, blood dripping from her nose and her busted lip, and she’s clearly unconscious, my hands are covered in her blood, her chest rises and falls from under me, and the blood from my own eye drips down onto her but I say, just in case she’s listening in her slumber,

 

“Or I’ll fucking kill you with my bare hands.”

 

_ Boom _

 

“You  _ raped us. _ ”

 

“Both of us.”

 

“And if you ever touch her again I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

 

And I get up off of her, stepping backward, looking at the sheer amount of people gathered around the hall, all silent, eyes wide like a whole bunch of gumballs just standing there dumbfounded that not only one, but two people had the guts to put their hands on her. At Minnie, lying there like a corpse in the middle of the hallway, and I wonder for only a second if anyone cares about her enough to go scoop her up.

 

And then Clementine’s grabbing my hand and pulling me down the hallway, as per usual when we have somewhere to be, but this time it’s different. I can’t help but look behind me at the mess we’ve made as I dash toward wherever Clementine’s taking me, and I don’t stop looking even as we enter a room and she lets go, checking all the stalls before she goes and locks the bathroom door.

 

I can’t cry again. It’s like I’m out of tears and I haven’t got a good enough look at my face to be able to tell if there’s even a place for the tears to come out of.

 

“FUCK!”

 

Clementine paces back and forth like last time she and I were upset together, and I tiptoe my way to the first mirror, trying to get my vision to stop blurring enough to get a good look, and there’s blood. So, so much blood, like ‘I didn’t know I could bleed this much’ amount of blood. My lip is burst open and it stings as it swells, and part of me is glad. If I’m gonna get in a fight that intense it better leave a scar.

 

“Vi, no,” she says, stepping toward me and turning me around. “Don’t look at it. Oh, fuck.”

 

“Why not?” I ask.

 

She pushes me back toward the sink and I sit on it, hoping it isn’t wet, but not really caring at the same time.

 

“I don’t want it to upset you.” Tears start to leak out the corners of her eyes.

 

“It’s not upsetting me,” I say, resting my hands on her shoulders.

 

Fuck, she’s close. I could just.

 

“I’m not gonna make you if you don’t want me to, but will you please let me see it? At least for a second?”

 

I sigh. “I don’t want it to upset you.”

 

“I’m already upset,” she says. “What’s one more?”

 

I scoff and smile at her, just with one corner of my mouth. “Go for it.”

 

“In a minute,” she says. “I need to be breathing okay first.”

 

She looks at me, so deep, like diving head first into the deep end of the ocean. Her breathing relaxing, all the while, like she can breathe underwater. I’d expect no different from this girl and all the ways she surprises and amazes me. 

 

She amazes me with the light freckles like a mask on her face, and she’s definitely spent more time out in the sun since I saw them last because there’s more. Or maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough. She surprises me in the way she huffs as she’s swiping blood from my face, and her huffing isn’t from her being exhausted anymore. There’s something else behind it.

 

Her whole face begins to relax as well, her eyes half-lidded, her lips a red curtain and her teeth the stage, poking out from behind them. She’s melting like ice, barely able to maintain a sympathetic smile as she continues swiping at my cheek, her finger surely not collecting blood anymore.

 

“Can I?” she asks.

 

“Yeah,” I breathe.

 

She asserts herself between my legs and reaches her hand to the knot behind my head, and she definitely doesn’t notice how close her face is to mine. She begins to unwrap the thing achingly slow and I feel it pulling away from my face like a bandaid. I guess that’s the purpose it served, anyway. 

 

She closes her eyes halfway through and lets the bandage fall to the floor, her breathing shaking. I can feel it on my face. Warm. Her hand still cupping my cheek, swiping at me. Also warm.

 

She opens her eyes and if she reacted, it’s not on her face. She just looks at the bad eye and pans down my face, to my lips. To my eye again. To my lips.

 

She rests her forehead on mine again and I wrap my feet around to the back of her, holding her to me. 

 

“Is it bad?” I ask.

 

“Yeah,” she breathes.

 

“Oh,” I whisper.

 

“You’re still beautiful,” she says.

 

“I’m really in shock now,” I say, leaning into her.

 

“Because you finally hit her back?”

 

“Because I was strong enough to do it,” I say. “Have I really been capable all along?”

 

“You’ve never seen her hurt me. Maybe that was a catalyst. Or something.”

 

“...catalyst?”

 

“Sorry,” she says. “Yeah, a catalyst is like something that makes another thing happen.”

 

“Like domino effect?” I ask.

 

“Kind of,” she says.

 

She takes her forehead off of mine and I see the blood she’s collected on hers, and finally the blood from Minnie’s hands around her neck. She looks me up and down again and her gaze is so intense I don’t notice the lost physical contact. Her breathing gets louder and louder and I just wait for something to happen. The door to burst open, my eye to start pouring blood, for one of us to have a fucking heart attack; because I just don’t understand how here and now is the place we’re gonna share our first kiss.

 

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, with us both bathed in ours and others’ blood, while I’m sitting on the school bathroom sink, while people are undoubtedly waiting outside the door for us to emerge; while Minnie waits unconscious somewhere.

 

But who gives a fuck?

 

Her lips only brush mine at first, and I taste the breath coming out of her mouth. Something about it is intimate. We’re both just sitting and standing there with our mouths barely open and she tilts her head and sighs “fuck” into my open lips.

 

I put my hands on her hips and pull her closer, both our eyes closed. 

 

“I want to kiss you,” she breathes.

 

For a second I worry she’s gonna finish her though by saying she can’t, though. That the situation is too fucked up, that emotions are running too high; that she needs to get her shit together. Or maybe me.

 

“I want you to,” I whisper.

 

I worry that Minnie’s fucked us up too much, and that all I’m gonna be thinking about is her fire red hair and the way her tongue invaded my mouth. That I’m gonna back away and be staring into Minnie’s puffy, reddened eyes; that I’ve touched myself to the thought of this moment so many times and all it amounts to is another obstacle to overcome.

 

“I’m scared,” she whispers.

 

And, fuck- if she knew how scared I am, too. How fucking terrifying it is to put yourself so close to someone, completely at their will, to be held by someone and hope they don’t crush you; to trust someone with every ounce of your feelings. 

 

“Me too,” I say, and I can feel her smile.

 

“I don’t want to fuck it up,” she says.

 

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “You won’t.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Kiss me,” I whisper.

 

And all the times I wished this would happen flood into my mind again. Out on the bleachers. In my room. On the roof, in my bed; everything, all jumping in front of the rest of my thoughts and staying there as we hold each other and as I wait. As my heart ricochets around my ribcage again and as our stomachs press together.

 

She brushes my hair from my face and her lips are on mine. I don’t hate the way it stings, or hate the fact that we’re in a bathroom in a school I hate, or that the sink is pushing up against my back or even that it tastes like blood.

 

She’s warm, she’s soft- only for a second- and then she’s whispering.

 

“I’m bi, Violet,” she says, still holding me there.

 

The words I’ve been waiting to hear for a lifetime, it seems, roll off of her lips with ease, like she’d been rehearsing this.

 

“I’m lesbian, Clem,” I say, moving my hands up to her face to pull her back.

 

And her lips are on mine again after a little hum of approval from her and she waits there for a second before she begins to move, working against me and then with me when I catch on, and I’m in my field of flowers, breathing her in, tasting her lips, feeling her fingers press into my cheek as though she were holding a peach, all too gentle. I’m skipping and hopping and jumping around inside and can barely keep from smiling as she inhales and moves again.

 

It’s a million things all at once. All that I anticipated and at the same time all I didn’t expect. I expected her to kiss softly, and she does, but I’m completely under her control. I didn’t know kissing had this dynamic, at least with her. I thought it was an equal exchange but in the best way possible I feel like she’s guiding me.

 

She’s showing me what it’s like to be loved. Even with an ugly gash on my face, she kisses me like I’m the last thing she’ll get to kiss in her life. She kisses me like I haven’t been kissed before; like she needs to show me everything, and her tongue brushes my lips like a question, like she’s asking me, “hey, have you ever tasted someone before?”

 

_ No. _

 

And it’s incredible. You get used to the taste of your own mouth but when her tongue is sliding up against mine, slick and smooth, it’s like I’m exploring this part of her nobody gets to know about. Nobody will ever know what it’s like to be in this moment, all the experiences we’ve shared behind us, as the taste of blood eventually dissipates and it’s just her and I and nobody else exists.

 

And then she shows me more, as if kissing someone could get more intimate. She pushes herself into me and whimpers for a moment before our lips separate and she says, her forehead resting on mine, “I’m falling in love with you.”

 

As if to agree, I kiss her again. And I didn’t know kissing made this sound. Every time it happens I just think “come back; come back.” It’s slow, like we have the rest of our lives to do this, like I could subsist off of her kissing me alone, like the sun and stars could disappear into the outer reaches of the universe and we’d still just be here holding one another.

 

She pulls away and I say “thank you.”

 

“For what?” she whispers against my lips.

 

“Everything,” I say, pressing a chaste kiss to her.

 

And I do feel the stars and sun and moon disappearing, the room phasing out around us, my seat falling from under me and I just hold onto her for dear life, but gently, like we’re floating in space. Her forehead still resting on mine, our noses brushing occasionally as we breathe, and she holds me back as if to say ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

 

“Did you mean it?” I ask.

 

“Mean what?”

 

“That you’re falling in love with me,” 

 

I feel her nod. “I was falling in love with you before I even met you,” she says. 

 

I hum. “That’s really poetic.”

 

“And you?” she asks.

 

“I’m falling in love with you,” I say.

 

Then I’m pulling her back into me, wrapping my legs around again, hearing the sounds our kissing makes. Pulling her closer. Closer. Until she can’t be any more pressed up to me and our chests are fitting into one another as we breathe. As a heat blooms and blossoms from within me, making every finger and toe tingle, making my warm parts warmer.

 

I know where she’s taking me when she pulls me down a hallway littered with onlookers and she and I don’t giggle as we usually do, but this is what the situation calls for. I’m too busy thinking about her to allow any other space in my head.

 

She straddles me on my bed and my lower half is all tense and I’m too bunched up to enjoy what’s going on until she says “do you want this, Violet?”

 

“I want you so bad,” I whisper.

 

And for the first time since the bathroom she holds my face again and just looks into my eyes like she’s searching for her answer there. Like it’s written across my irises and she scans them back and forth, feeling our breath on each other’s faces.

 

“I love you,” she says.

 

I press my forehead to hers again and close my eyes, speaking against her lips. “I love you too.”

 

“I don’t care how long I’ve known you,” she says in between kisses.

 

“Me either.”

 

“I’ve never had this before,” she says.

 

She topples over beside me, our legs intertwining as we hold one another’s faces and just allow this time to talk.

 

“Louis told me he liked me, at his house,” she says, the tips of our noses touching.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, her hands leaving my face only to pull me into her. “I told him I don’t like him.”

 

“I only like you,” she says, closing her eyes.

 

“Fuck,” I whisper.

 

It’s strange to think that I occupy as much space in her mind as she does in mine. Sometimes I forget that she likes me, too, and that I’m not just the thorn in her side. That there are things about me that make her heart skip a beat and that she was anticipating this moment just as much as I was.

 

I shift to kiss her again and that’s how I notice how wet I am, and I wonder if she is, too. If we’re really doing this, right now, right after our first kiss.

 

“I’ve never done this before,” she says.

 

“What?” I ask.

 

“Everything we’re doing,” she says. “I’ve never done it.”

 

“You’ve never kissed a girl before?” I ask.

 

“I’ve never kissed anybody,” she says. “Ever.”

 

“Me either,” I say. “Minnie doesn’t count.”

 

“Never has, never will,” she says.

 

She dips her head to the side and presses a chaste kiss to my neck, then a deeper one. How can you even get deep on a flat surface? I’m not sure. But she does it, and it’s wet, and I squirm against her.

 

“Fuck, Clem,” I say.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

I nod.

 

She gets back up again and almost dances her way to the bathroom, wetting a washcloth and coming back to straddle me once she’s got it.

 

I can’t even see that well right now but she’s still the most fucking beautiful thing I’ve ever looked at. Everything’s so blurry and I wish I could just see her better because I’m gonna remember this, so I wanna have every detail. Her freckles, her eyelashes, her nose; the entire cartography of her face. I could write a fucking dissertation on every feature. The distance between her eyes. The synapse of the iris and pupil, as it gets smaller. Smaller. Smaller.

 

I can’t help but focus on how her pupils swallow her irises whole as she’s dabbing at my face with this washcloth. The warm of it cancels out the pain I feel on my face and I just imagine how she’s feeling right now. How her heart pounds, how her underwear’s friction against her makes her uncomfortable, how hard it is for her to keep from shaking as she wipes all the blood away.

 

“So, not to be a party pooper, but this eye needs to be checked out.”

 

_ Yeah, I guess. _

 

“She must have hit you with a ring again because the cornea is all scratched.”

 

_ I don’t care. _

 

“And, if you get to see someone in time, they might be able to help you see again. So maybe…”

  
  


_ Clementine, just stop. _

 

“...and I could keep talking but I just really wanna kiss you right now.”

 

I smile at her and she smiles at me, pulling me in and our teeth clank because we can’t stop smiling and we can’t stop giggling and she takes my hands, pinning them above my head, backing away to look at me.

 

“What are you smiling at?” I ask.

 

“What do you mean? I’m not smiling,” she says, trying to drop it, but it just comes back full force and she’s laughing again.

 

God, she’s gorgeous. And when I look at her I feel like I exist beyond space and time, like I don’t have class tomorrow, like I don’t need to find a place to live; like I can just keep lying here and kissing her until the end of eternity because the culmination of our love is more important than any song I could vomit out or any dinner we could have or any place we could go-

 

-fuck, I’m in love with her.

 

I feel my face relaxing and she keeps smiling from above me, unpinning me only to tuck a curl back into her pigtail, and then she realizes something’s amiss.

 

“What?” she asks.

 

“What do I do?” I ask back.

 

She just knits her eyebrows together in lieu of explaining her confusion.

 

I lift my head off the pillow and kiss her again, speaking in between kisses, “what do I do?”

 

“What-”

 

“-fuck.”

 

“Do I…”

 

“What do you mean?” Clementine asks.

 

“I don’t want to leave you at the end of the year.”

 

“Vi-”

 

“-And I don’t have a place to stay, and I can’t go be with my parents-”

 

“- _ Violet,”  _ she says.

 

“...yeah?”

 

“Fuck it all. Don’t worry about it right now.”

 

“But.” I can’t figure out how to protest.

 

“You have me right now. Are you gonna spend that time worrying about the future or are you gonna enjoy it?”

 

I spend some time trying to un-blur her face and ultimately we smile at each other again

 

Then her face falls and I consider asking her what’s wrong but then she shifts to lie next to me, face to face, and her hand is sliding down my stomach, and she scans over my face again.

 

“Is this okay?” she asks.

 

And, so dumbstruck as to what is happening, ask, “is what okay?”

 

“I want to touch you,” she whispers, bringing her face so close I swear I can feel the heat of her cheeks.

 

“Touch me, then,” I whisper.

 

And I thought the first time I have sex would be different. Of course I wanted it to happen with her, but I guess I imagined it more like there’s a marked difference between having sex and not having it and it feels like there’s no way I’m just lying here about to lose my virginity to this girl. It’s just happening? What? I woke up this morning thinking it’s just gonna be another day, and this happens?

 

Her hand trailing lower and lower until it reaches that ticklish part right below my stomach and, I guess, my jolting acts as a catalyst for her to go past the waistband of my pants and I watch her lips part, feeling her breath on my own, as she begins to circle her fingers over my underwear.

 

She continues as she says “I’ve never done this before.”

 

“Neither have I.”

 

And then she has this concerned look, and she slides her hand out from my pants and glances at it before she looks back at me.

 

“I can’t do this right now,” she says, shaking her head.

 

“That’s okay. We have weeks.”

 

“I just can’t stop… thinking about her,” she says.

 

“About Minnie?”

 

A cry wrinkles her nose. “Sorry.”

 

“It’s not your fault, Clem.”

 

“I just wanna be able to do this.”

 

“We can! We can just do it another time.”

 

“No, I just…” she says, sitting up and wiping her tear with the blood cloth. “I feel like she’s gonna be in control of me forever.”

 

“How so?”

 

“I can’t even have sex when I  _ want to, _ ” she says, gently rocking back and forth. “With  _ you.  _ Who, sorry to say, but it’s true; I’ve been wanting to have sex with for  _ days  _ now.”

 

“Damn, if I’d known-”

 

“-We still wouldn’t be able to do anything because of fucking  _ Minerva, _ ” she says, gritting her teeth.

 

“What is it, exactly? What’s stopping you?”

 

“It’s stupid.”

 

“I don’t think it’s as stupid as you think,” I say, sitting up.

 

“I worry I’m gonna end up… Fuck. Raping you,” she says, looking at the floor.

 

“What? You’d never,” I say.

 

“Exactly. Minerva’s fucked me up,” she says.

 

“I consented, though.”

 

“I still worry,” she says, tucking a curl back in with the rest.

 

And then we’re just sitting there, exhausted, as she cries in silence and I hold her hands in mine.

 

“Prom?” she asks.

 

“What?”

 

“Prom. Are you going?”

 

“Wasn’t planning on it,” I say, scooting closer. “You?”

 

“If you’ll go with me,” she says, squeezing my hands once. “I have a dress I can wear. I don’t know if you have anything, but-”

 

“-yes,” I answer, smiling at her. “Yes. We’ll go to prom.”

 

“And after,” she begins.

 

“What?”

 

“We’ll have sex.”

 

“Why then?” I ask.

 

“I feel like it’d be easier for me if we had a plan,” she says, resting her head on my shoulder.

 

“It’s a plan, then,” I say.

 

I feel her smiling on me.

 

Then eventually we put on my shirts as pajamas and lie down facing one another again, smiling intermittently, and when she closes her eyes I start imagining what I could wear to prom.

 

I don’t own a single dress, so I guess the closest next thing is a suit, but I don’t own one either. I own plenty of button ups, so maybe I could wear one with a blazer and a decent pair of pants. Maybe I could get ahold of a tie somehow to make myself look somewhat presentable. I’ll shower beforehand, of course. Shame there’s no shower in the dorm bathrooms. I’ll just have to go when everyone else isn’t there.

 

“Violet?” Clem asks, despite her closed eyes.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Don’t leave me,” she says.

 

A part of me panics. There’s not much to be said for where I can live, and I don’t know how long it’s gonna be between the end of the school year and when I get to see her again, but amidst my worrying I realize, somehow, that’s not what she meant.

 

“Never,” I say, kissing the tip of her nose.

 

“Ditto,” she says.

 

And the last thing I remember seeing before I passed out was a faint smile on her lips; the fireflies and stars both glowing outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> are u glad u got the first kiss ;)
> 
> So yeah, you might be thinking "what the fuck happened with Minnie? She just beat the fuck out of her and left?"
> 
> THAT WILL ALL BE EXPLAINED!
> 
> I wrote it as such because Violet is so enamored with Clementine that she can't waste another second thinking about Minnie and her bullshit. She's fucking whipped. Clementine is her god. It's in her nature to idolize people and that's what she does.
> 
> I have plans for the next chapters, as always, and I never planned to go into too much detail with a sex scene but I have a plan as to how I might write it to be more emotional than sexy, per se, because usually when I write smutty stuff I write it to be attractive firstly and secondly emotional but I wanna switch it up. Anyway, let me know what you'd rather see because the sex stuff can go either way. Detail or less detail or somewhere in between?
> 
> as I've said nearly every chapter I'm finishing this story. Seeing it to its end. And I'm also happy to read your predictions or hopes.
> 
> Thank you for supporting me. You know who you are!


	7. Won't Let You Talk Me Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m just…” I say, not knowing how to finish my sentence.
> 
> “Nervous,” she helps.
> 
> “Yeah.”
> 
> “About…” she continues.
> 
> “Our plans,” I say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY HEY HEY!
> 
> Don't worry. I don't break promises- I'm finishing this fic.
> 
> I had a severe depressive episode and wasn't even really getting out of my bed, thus the hiatus, but I am back now (obviously.) I'm also making some major life changes. I was heavily pierced and I removed most of my facial piercings to get some jobs so I can save money. Why do I need to save money? Because I'm going to University in London. 
> 
> I live in Virginia.
> 
> I'm changing as a person, having some coming-of-age shit going on, and writing actually helps me process it. 
> 
> At the time I WANTED to be done writing this chapter, I was binge watching black mirror, hence the song Violet sings.
> 
> I recommend listening to Roslyn by Bon Iver while you read this chapter. You guys unanimously agreed to have a detailed and emotional/descriptive sex scene, and I aim to please ;) so that's what I've gone ahead and written. And Roslyn is a very somber song that I think Violet could relate to in this situation. Everything's getting better but it's bleak because of circumstance.
> 
> Song recommendation: Bon Iver- Roslyn

And the first thing I notice when I wake up is that Clementine’s not wrapped around me. The second thing I notice is crying down the hallway, and the third thing I notice is that I’m only wearing underwear and a tee shirt, but that’s not exactly the first thing on my radar.

 

“I said I’ll fucking kill you if you touch her again, you bitch,” I say, strutting over toward Minerva.

 

She leans against the wall, her eyes closed and face stained with red streaks from her tears, kind of like frosting dripping down a cake. 

 

“Fuck you, Violet; I didn’t touch your fucking girlfriend,” she says, and something in the way she says it makes me believe her, so I take a step back.

 

“Why are both of you crying, then?” I ask, eyeing Clementine from behind the doorframe, her arms crossed as well.

 

“It’s your fucking fault, Minnie,” Clementine spits.

 

“Fuck you, too. I didn’t do shit,” she says, kicking herself off the wall to face Clementine.

 

“That’s demonstrably false, you piece of shit,” Clementine says, bursting past her. She points to my face. “ _ You _ fucking did that.”

 

“Her  _ dad _ did that,” she says, throwing her arms up in frustration.

 

“Oh, so you  _ didn’t _ beat the fuck out of her yesterday?”

 

“She made me fail my project!” 

 

“ _ So what? _ ”

 

“I’m not going to  _ college, _ idiot.”

 

“I don’t think that has much to do with Violet, you fucking wench.”

 

She glances at me with this concerned expression and then regains her anger looking at Clementine. “Cunt.”

 

“Wow, good one,” Clementine says, sniffling. She then looks at me. “Prom.”

 

“What about it?” I ask.

 

Minnie rolls her entire head in lieu of her eyes. 

 

“Everyone involved in the fight can’t go,” she says, staring holes into the floor.

 

Minerva scoffs and sulks back into the room. 

 

“Why are you so upset about it, though?” I ask.

 

“We had  _ plans,”  _ she says in a hushed whisper.

 

I can’t help but smile a little. “Yeah, but we can still have  _ plans, _ ” I say, stepping toward her.

 

She shakes her head, looking back towards Minerva to make sure she can’t hear. “It’s just another way Minerva’s getting to me,” she says, forcing a sarcastic smile.

 

So here’s my opportunity to make it up to her. 

 

“She’s not gonna stop our prom,” I say.

 

“What do you mean?” she asks, uncrossing her arms.

 

“Let’s make our own.”

 

“Our own prom?”

 

“On the roof.”

 

She smiles and nods. “Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

And if Minerva weren’t right here I would kiss her, I think, as I stand here unable to keep my eyes off of her. And I must look sort of dopey because she asks me, “you okay?”

 

Yeah, I’m fine. Completely, totally in control of this situation. Even in control when I close the gap between us and peck her on the lips in clear shot, although I’m not really paying attention to Minnie’s reaction when I back up and run my hands down her arms and to her own hands, returning a smile. With that dopey look on my face.

 

“What are you looking like that at me for?” she asks.

 

_ Oh, it’s nothing. Just that I’m deep sea diving in your eyes and I’m out of oxygen. Just that I’m watching the way your pupils dilate again and your irises are so dark it’s hard to tell which is which, unless I’m looking really close, which I am. So close that I can count your freckles, and I swear I’ve found Ursa Minor, or maybe Major; I’m still trying to decide as I scan over your lips, which have no right to be so soft and kissable, like you’ve never gone a day without chapstick.  _

 

“Violet?”

 

And as I’m standing here I notice how her curls go both clockwise and counterclockwise, and I want nothing more than to pull the end of one, just barely, to see if it’ll spring back into place. With anyone else I wouldn’t dare but I’m just curious when it comes to Clementine. Maybe she’d find it endearing and wouldn’t mind.

 

“ _ Violet?” _

 

It feels weird with the door closed, alone in my room, now that we’ve talked about being intimate with one another. Maybe like my head is floating like a balloon above my body and I can’t help but bob my vision intermittently between Clementine, standing straight and tall with a dress draped over her arm, and the door. I look at it so intently, in my nervousness, that I notice every little scratch and ding in the doorknob.

 

I’ve done this before. Why am I so shaky this time? She hasn’t even gotten undressed yet. Simply looking at the dress makes my heart rate increase tenfold. My mind is filled to the brim with fantasies of how she’s gonna look with it on, how she’s gonna look at me when I take it off-

 

“ _ Violet!” _

 

“Yeah, repeat that?”

 

“I’m gonna need you to zip this up when it’s on, I can’t reach my back.”

 

“O-okay.”

 

“Are you alright?” she asks.

 

“Yeah, I just don’t know what I’m gonna wear yet,” I say.

 

She steps towards me. “It honestly doesn’t really matter.”

 

“Why not?”

 

She smiles sheepishly. “One, you look good in everything you wear, and two, it’s not gonna be on for very long, anyway.”

 

“Wow.”

 

She offers a crooked smile and takes another step towards me. “If you still want,” she says, dropping the dress on the floor and hooking her thumbs under her shirt straps.

 

“Don’t drop that,” I say, instinctively dropping to pick it up, and when I stand, Clementine’s taking off her shirt.

 

Fuck, she’s not wearing a bra.

 

“So?” she asks, taking one last step to close the distance, and takes my hands in hers. Gingerly, with her worried eyes, like she’s overstepped a boundary.

 

“Not right now, but yeah,” I say.

 

“Of course,” she says, sighing and pulling my hands towards her. “Wanna get some practice first, though?” she mumbles.

 

She places my hands around her pants zipper and I watch her face as I undo a button and pull the zipper down in one swift motion. She lets out a drawn-out breath, her eyes going fuzzy. Like she’s dreaming.

 

“Fuck,” she says.

 

If this is anything what it’s gonna be like when we have sex, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to breathe long enough to get through it. My heart aches with how much faster it wants to pound and I hook my fingers under the waistband, sliding her pants over her butt and kneeling to pull them to her ankles. 

 

She just stands there, looking down at me as I’m looking up at her, shaky breaths escaping her mouth as her face goes red.

 

“What,” I start, hooking my thumbs under her underwear waistband, “...did you mean by ‘practice?’”

 

Fuck, it can’t happen now. I’m not ready. I feel my own blush overcoming my face as she places her hands over mine and pulls down, dropping to the floor as well, leveling her gaze with mine. I feel both like I’m looking at God and like I’m gazing into the gaping maw of a shark. So insecure.

 

“You’re beautiful,” I whisper, noting how her lips curl when she smiles.

 

“Not as beautiful as you,” she says, cupping my cheek in her hand.

 

It doesn’t feel like she’s only cupping my cheek. It feels like she’s holding my entire being. Like I can rest. Untighten my shoulders. So I melt into her, nuzzling my cheek into her hand, like a cat or some sort of small animal. And she watches me with some otherworldly curiosity, forcing her eyelids to relax and skip a breath as she swallows.

 

Fuck, Violet. Not now.

 

“As much as I’d like to continue, we should probably get dressed,” I say, handing her dress to her.

 

“Why?” she says, a wrinkle between her brows, and then smiles and winks, pulling the thing over her head. Not confidently at all, like the first time I went to her room that day in the bathroom. More like she might explode if I touch her.

 

I watch as it passes over every inch of her; as her fingers fold around the hem and she pulls it down and fills it out. I make sure to turn my head away at the last second so she doesn’t think I’m staring at her, but I’m burning. With how pale I am there’s no way she can’t tell I’m blushing. 

 

“Hey? Violet,” she says, as I continue to stare holes in the wall.

 

I blink before looking back at her, her cheeks engulfed in blush as well.

 

She stutters, “How do I look?”

 

“With your eyes,” I say.

 

She rolls her eyes. “I blame myself for assuming you’d say anything else.”

 

I scoff at her and shake my head, crossing my arms. She takes another step forward, her eyes still on mine as she drapes her hands over mine, pulling my arms out of their knot. It’s like we choreographed before. I close my eyes as I lift my arms up and she pulls off my shirt, dropping it on the floor as she focuses on my chest.

 

And then she falls into me, pressing her forehead to mine; pulling my hips closer.

 

“Shit,” she whispers.

 

“You’ve seen me before,” I whisper.

 

“Not like this,” she says.

 

She sucks in a breath and lets go, taking a step back, and takes my hands and pulls my arms around her. Momentarily I’m confused as to what she’s doing but then I remember she just needs me to zip her dress, and I chastise myself for having my mind in the gutter.

 

In order to stop myself from losing it, I turn and face my closet and all its contents.

 

“Have you decided what you’re wearing yet?” Clementine asks behind me, and somehow it solidifies all of this. 

 

“No… I don’t even have anything half as nice as what you’re wearing.”

 

She steps behind me. “You don’t own a single dress.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

“I wasn’t agreeing with you,” she says, stepping in front of me, and starts thumbing through my shirts.

 

“Well then, you’ll find as you rummage through my crap that I only own, like, five outfits, and none of them are nice.”

 

She finds the end of the closet, and I’m embarrassed that she hasn’t pulled anything out yet. I think she won’t until she all but tears something out the back and holds it between us.

 

“You have a blazer?!” she asks, looking like she found a secret door inside my closet instead.

 

“Yeah,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest again. “That’s the only thing I know I’m gonna wear.”

 

She drapes it over her arm and thumbs through some more shirts for a moment before she finds one, draping it over the blazer, and pulls out some black pants.

 

“Now you have a whole outfit! Well, minus the shoes and socks.”

 

“A black blazer, a white tee, and a black pair of pants,” I say, staring at the clothes she’s holding.

 

“And a beautiful girl,” she says.

 

“Beautiful?” I ask, afraid. Of what? I don’t know.

 

Because as we stand, on this roof, probably a foot away from each other, all I wanna do is close the gap but my body isn’t listening. My body isn’t listening when I tell my heart to slow down as my good eye suffocates in the magenta of her dress. It’s like the color was created just for her.

 

My body isn’t listening when I will my legs to step forward, my mind flooding with intrusive images of us being intimate with one another.

 

As I gaze into her eyes I imagine her peering at me from between my legs. As I trace the slope of her nose I envision the tip of it pressing into my pubic hair, and as my eyes walk the edge of her lips, I imagine her tongue darting out between them to lick me. I skip looking at her chest in favor of her hands. I read through all the possibilities my mind’s compiled of where they might be and at what times.

 

The length and diameter of her fingers.

 

The length and diameter of two fingers.

 

Noticing how she curls them at her side.

 

“You know, you kind of look like a pirate,” she says, leaning against the guardrail. 

 

I lean on one leg. “I kind of look like an idiot,” I correct her.

 

She rolls her eyes at me. “First you have a problem with your outfit and now you have a problem with your eye,” she says.

 

“Hence me looking like an idiot,” I say.

 

“You don’t, though,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her. Isn’t that supposed to mean she’s upset? 

 

I make a note to turn down the self-hatred. “...I don’t?” I ask.

 

“No,” she says, with unwavering eye contact.

 

I clasp my hands in front of me and lean on my other leg, gazing up into the sky. “The stars look really nice tonight.”

 

“Why does it seem that everything looks better on nights that’re supposed to be good?” she asks.

 

“Maybe there’s some sort of placebo effect that causes you to think everything looks better when it really doesn’t,” I say. Meanwhile, I’m thinking there’s no possibility she doesn’t look any better than she usually does, which is not an insult to her beauty, but rather conveys that she’s beyond naturally beautiful. Beyond human. Like it should be forbidden to touch her.

 

Not only does the breeze make us shiver but it also blows around her stray curls; those not tied in pigtails. Her eyelashes catch in the light and I shiver again.

 

“Cold?” she asks.

 

“Not exactly,” I say. She smiles; at one corner of her mouth.

 

She shifts to stand unaided by the guardrail and my heart skips a beat in anticipation. 

 

“So, what do people do at prom, anyway?” she asks, uncrossing her arms.

 

“I don’t know. I guess a better question to ask would be: what do  _ we  _ want to do at  _ our _ prom?”

 

She blows out a breath. “If it were up to me, we’d have music. Candles. Decorations. Food…”

 

“-Oh, yeah. Food,” I say.

 

“But we don’t have any of that, I guess.”

 

“Fuck Minerva,” I say, imagining how actual prom is going and what Minerva’s doing.

 

“Seriously,” she says. “For so many reasons.” She tightens her lips into a line.

 

“We don’t have to talk about her,” I say, taking a step forward.

 

“Who?” she asks, and then winks.

 

“No idea,” I answer.

 

Her eyes land on my hands and I realize I’ve been picking my fingers again.

 

“Don’t do that,” she says.

 

I don’t want to shut her down so I blurt out “I’m nervous.”

 

Fuck, I didn’t want it to seem that way.

 

“Nervous about what?” she asks, stepping closer.

 

I just laugh awkwardly and widen my eyes.

 

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” she asks, taking my hands in hers.

 

“No! Nono. I mean, not in a bad way, no,” I spit out.

 

“Good,” she says, smiling, and takes a step closer. I wonder why.

 

“I’m just…” I say, not knowing how to finish my sentence.

 

“Nervous,” she helps.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“About…” she continues.

 

“Our plans,” I say.

 

“Ahhh,” she says.

 

“Are you?” I ask, taking a step closer.

 

“Very,” she says.

 

For a moment I can see her fear crack through her porcelain face. “I’m sorry,” I say.

 

_ Stupid. _

 

“For what?” she asks.

 

I laugh nervously. “I don’t know.”

 

Her dress doesn’t flow with the wind. It more so shifts with it as though she were a sunflower.

 

She closes the gap. “Let’s start here,” she says, placing her hands on my shoulders.

 

So I hold her waist, and she pulls me closer, ‘til our faces are so close we can feel each other breathing.

 

My heart…

 

Fuck.

 

She starts swaying side to side, and I lean into her lightly and yet with my entire being. As if to say ‘Don’t let go.’

 

As if to say, ‘I trust you.’

 

As if to say, ‘I belong to you.’

 

_ Only you. _

 

_ I need you to stay. _

 

_ Or I wouldn’t quite be whole. _

 

“What are you thinking about?” She asks, tilting her head at me.

 

“Everything,” I say.

 

“Try thinking of nothing,” she says, giving me a reaffirming squeeze.

 

“How do you do that?”

 

“When a thought comes up- push it out. Only think of what’s happening right now,” she says, taking a breath. “In this moment.”

 

_ You’re happening in this moment. My body and yours. My eyes and yours. My lips and yours. Your dress and my suit. My pounding heart. The residual light of the dorms below, the beaming light of the stars and moon, the beaming light of your face. You are the moon. You are my tide. My ocean.  _

 

_ I’m only sand. _

 

“How about it?” she asks.

 

“I’m thinking about everything I was before,” I say.

 

She smiles.

 

She bites her lip and tucks a curl behind her ear. “I wish we had music,” she says.

 

“I can help with that,” I say, before I have a chance to stop myself.

 

She furrows her brows. “How?”

 

“Well, I’m not exactly good at it or anything, but maybe I could sing, possibly, and that could be like our music? I don’t know. It was a dumb idea.”

 

“No it wasn’t,” she says, swaying harder for a second.

 

“I don’t even know what to sing,” I say, trying to avoid her gaze.

 

“Anything,” she says, pressing herself further into me, if that were even possible.

 

“With the taste of your lips, I’m on a ride,” I begin, not trying to sound good, playfully snarling at her.

 

She giggles. “No! Nonono, not that song,” she says, and I catch her as she stumbles. “Something romantic.”

 

“Romantic?” I say, raising my eyebrows.

 

“Yes. Romantic,” she jokingly deadpans.

 

“God, why did I say I’d do this? I’m not even good,” I say.

 

“Prove it.”

 

“You want me to prove to you I’m terrible?”

 

“I want you to prove me right,” she says. 

 

“Oh, of course,” I joke.

 

But she takes on a serious tone. She slides her hands from my shoulders to behind my neck, halting her swaying. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she starts, brushing my bangs from my face. “It’s just me and you here, and even if you sucked, I’d never make fun of you.”

 

The standing still is more intimate than the swaying. It reminds me of being back in my dorm. “O-okay.”

 

“Whenever you’re ready,” she says.

 

And my mind runs through all the different songs I could sing. Romantic. Too romantic. Cheesy. Too popular-

 

-oh. 

 

Perfect.

 

I force myself to relax and stretch out my lungs with a deep breath, and watch her facial expression change as I begin.

 

“...You can blame me, try to shame me, and still I’ll care for you.”

 

She smiles, more indicative of curiosity than knowing the song. She starts swaying gently and I’ve never felt so small. I don’t hate it.

 

“You can run around, even put me down, still I’ll be there for you.”

 

Small like the universe is endless, yet like I couldn’t get close enough to her if I tried. Any distance between us is still an endless integer we could fill. And so I try to, smushing our bodies together, the only things separating us our clothes and the space between atoms, and I quiet my voice, singing by her ear.

 

“The world may think I’m foolish, they can’t see you like I can,” I continue as she rests her chin on my shoulder.

 

As I tighten my grip on her waist and she slots one of her legs in between mine. I can feel her heartbeat wrestling with mine. Like a bass thrumming through my body.  _ Thump. Thump. Thump.  _

 

“Oh, but anyone-”

 

_ Thump _

 

“-who knows what love is-”

 

_ Thump _

 

“-Will understand.”

 

_ Thump. Thump. Thump. _

 

“Hey,” Clementine begins.

 

_ Thump. _

 

“Violet.”

 

_ Thump. Thump. Thump. _

 

“Let’s go to your dorm,” she finishes.

 

_ Thump. Thump. Thump. _

 

The trip down the ladder and into my dorm is a blur. I find myself hoping Brody isn’t in there in lieu of worrying about anything else, and focus on the moment, like Clementine told me to. Her hand in mine; only the sound of our footsteps and rustling clothes.

 

But I find myself thinking about the near future more than anything, despite my efforts. When my grip goes slack as we walk down the hallway, she squeezes my hand and it solidifies the fact that we’re about to have  _ plans. _

 

And for whatever reason, I find myself holding back a flood of tears behind a dam of twigs.

 

She slowly, quietly turns and pulls the knob and I know I’m not gonna be able to hold it when we step inside, but she doesn’t look at me for awhile, and I worry she knows about my predicament.

 

We stand in the middle of the room for awhile, me staring at her back, and I can’t physically help from sniffling, but she doesn’t acknowledge it and I get nervous for some reason, like I want her to know I’m crying and at the same time like she might be crying, too.

 

And then she turns around, and her eyes are already pink and her lashes damp and clumped together, and my heart sinks. 

 

“Nonono, don’t cry,” I ironically cry out.

 

“ _ You’re  _ crying,” she says.

 

“You don’t have to cry just because I am,” I say, and sit down on my bed in front of her.

 

Her face contorts heavily before she forces herself to relax. She sniffles. “Violet, I don’t want to lose you,” she says.

 

And I lose it, silently sobbing in front of her, startling when she embraces me. “I don’t want to lose you, either,” I say, looking over the shoulder on which my chin rests.

 

“What do we do?” she asks, running her hands up and down my back.

 

“Clem,” I start, backing away to face her.

 

And I’ve never been so vulnerable. I’ve never felt so overwhelmed by someone’s beauty. I’ve never felt so breakable and yet had the confidence and trust that she wouldn’t do that to me.

 

“You make me know what it feels like to be loved. To have value,” I continue.

 

She looks at me with wide eyes. In awe, like I’m defying her expectations.

 

“I want to make you feel loved,” I say, waiting for it to start feeling like it was a good idea to do all this.

 

“I want to make you feel loved, too,” she says, giving me genuine puppy dog eyes. There’s no other way to describe it that she has a begging expression.

 

“You already do,” I say, forcing a smile.

 

“Please, I want to… please...” she whispers, her eyes darting around the room as though she were looking for her words.

 

“It’s okay, you can say it. You know I want it, too,” I say.

 

“Please let me fuck you,” she says, and she doesn’t have to force it.

 

And we don’t have to force our sniffling and tears, either. I lean my forehead against hers, placing my hands on her hips again. I speak almost up against her lips.

 

“I want you to fuck me,” I breathe, my eyes closed as I snake my hands around to her back and drag the zipper down.

 

I never knew it would be so easy and yet so hard. Words I never thought I’d have the courage to say out loud flow with the ease of a gentle wind, meanwhile I’m scaling a mountain.

 

The tips of our noses press together as I slide her spaghetti straps down her shoulders, exposing her breasts.

 

I suck in a breath. “Shit,” I stutter.

 

“It’s okay,” she whispers, shrugging my blazer off my shoulders, letting it drop somewhere on the floor. “I’ll go first.”

 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want-”

 

“-I want to touch you, Vi,” she says, backing away. Her breaths come out in shaky little puffs.

 

I nod and she pulls my shirt over my head, exposing me. She runs her hands over my arms for awhile before she backs away again.

 

“I-I wanna see you,” she says, clearly looking at my bad eye.

 

I nod and she takes a hand behind my head, unraveling the bandage, and it feels like she’s peeling my skin off. Not physically; emotionally. I feel so exposed. I don’t hate it.

 

“I know it still looks bad,” I say, shrugging away.

 

“Violet,” she begins, cupping my cheek.

 

“You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever looked at.”

 

She says it with such sincerity that I’d be rude to doubt her. I allow a tear to drip down my cheek, and she wipes it away before tilting her head and capturing my lips. She kisses me with a sort of eagerness not present in our other kisses. Like we don’t have time and yet all the time in the world. As though she’s trying to draw something out of me.

 

She slides her tongue against my lips and the next time I allow her in, brushing my tongue against hers, tasting her and the salt of our tears, and I crumble when she whimpers at it.

 

She has me lie down facing her and I sigh when she sucks on my tongue. Whenever she lets go I have an intense longing for her to return. It shoots straight to my core, like I feel a phantom tongue there, and I can’t help my hips from bucking.

 

“Can I touch you?” she whispers.

 

“Please touch me,” I say, watching as she dips her head down.

 

She kisses my neck and sucks the skin there just enough to tell it apart from a kiss, and I whine. When she reaches my chest, she says, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

 

“It’s okay. Just do what you’d want me to do,” I say.

 

I hold her head as she latches her lips onto my nipple, arching my chest into her mouth.

 

“F-fuck.”

 

She suckles as if to feed. The in between of my legs feels funny. So aroused that I can’t help but move my hips around, trying in vain to create friction.

 

She seems to notice this and looks at me from below as she places her hand in between my legs, pressing into me. I involuntarily grind against her, whining.

 

“Oh my god,” I say.

 

“Feels good?” she asks.

 

I frantically nod my head, angling myself better. 

 

She backs away for a moment to take her dress off completely and comes back, face to face, noticing my eyes and how they’re glazed over, noticing how my face is overcome with blush; noticing how my mouth hangs open as my breath huffs through it. 

 

“You’re already out of breath,” she says, looking down as she finds my pants zipper.

 

I nod.

 

“We can take it as slow as you want to, you know,” she says, slipping past my waistband.

 

“I don’t want to take it slow,” I say. We can take it fast all night.

 

“No?” she says, cupping over my underwear.

 

I whine. “I want you to fuck me.”

 

She forces a smile through her arousal and drags a fingertip along the length between my labia, stalling a bit.

 

“I’ve never done this before,” she says, and I recall when she said it the first time.

 

“I’ve never done it either,” I say, trying to distract myself from her caresses. 

 

“I just don’t wanna be, like… bad, or anything,” she says.

 

“Why would it be? It’s us.”

 

“I guess I’m just worried it might be bad because…” she begins. She draws out a moan from me as she slips her finger up again. “...it might be the only time we get to do this.”

 

I feel my tears starting to flow again; the pinch of a cry in my sinuses. “C-can we pretend?”

 

“Pretend what?” she asks, sniffling.

 

“Pretend we’re not gonna have to say goodbye.”

 

She nods, sullen, and withdraws her hand from my pants to grab my face and kiss me slow. Like we have enough time to do that. It helps me care less that we don’t.

 

She withdraws, the taste of her still in my mouth. “We’re gonna figure it out, Clem,” I say, halfheartedly.

 

“What if we don’t?”

 

I wipe a tear from her cheek. “We don’t have to think about it. It’s pointless to.” 

 

“I love you,” she says.

 

“I love you,” I return.

 

She lets out a breath. “I love you,” she repeats, and helps me onto my back, hooking her fingers underneath my pants waistband. I lift my butt and she pulls them down my legs. “I love you,” she repeats, before she kisses a trail from my sternum to above my underwear.

 

She looks up at me, waiting for approval. I nod.

 

And just like that she’s kissing below my navel as she slides my underwear off my legs. For a moment I feel insecure again, as she starts petting my hair, and equally as aroused. Equally as aroused, also, when she takes a deep breath in, and I notice the glistening sweat on her face; the curls around it especially curly.

 

“I love your hair,” she says. “It’s… ‘you,’” she whispers, and then wraps her arms around my legs, pulling me into her. Kisses my clit. And then my cunt is on her tongue.

 

“Fuck,” I whine, tilting my hips, and she pulls me closer in response.

 

I watch as she laps at me, her breathing laboring as much as, if not more than, mine, her eyes rolling back into her head as she moans.

 

“You taste incredible,” she manages, tightening her grip and whining as she continues to lick me, her head bobbing up and down in a gentle wave. I never knew what people meant when they said sex has a smell.

 

It’s intoxicating.

 

So is the fact that she’s getting off just by getting  _ me  _ off.

 

“Hey, don’t come yet, okay? I wanna help,” I say.

 

“You are,” she argues, but agrees simultaneously. 

 

I don’t think she notices she’s digging her nails into my legs but despite the pain it enhances the sensation and I feel like I’m floating. Like she has to keep pulling me down to earth. I’m high. 

 

I’m…

 

Hah…

 

Fuck.

 

I wiggle my hips around, trying to create more friction, and I’m trapped in this limbo of pleasure and static. I can’t quite reach the edge.

 

I’m almost embarrassed to ask, but I blurt, “inside me?”

 

And I expect her to use her fingers, but they don’t loosen from around me. And I’m thinking there’s no possible way she didn’t hear me until she prods the tip of her tongue at my entrance.

 

Nothing could keep me from gasping as she enters me, only partially, and then withdraws to drag her tongue to my clit, and back, down, down, down, to my entrance again. Prod. This time she gets as much of her tongue inside as possible.

 

“Clem, oh my godfuckmefuckfuckfuck.” I seem to have lost control of what words leave my mouth.

 

My hands at my sides, I stare up at the ceiling, worrying that looking at what she’s doing will push me over the edge, even though that’s what I want to happen.

 

I want to be pushed over the edge.

 

Thrown.

 

Dragged.

 

_ Fuck me like you love me. _

 

As though she read my mind, she halts her progress to whisper to me.

 

“Violet,” she starts, and I look down at her face.

 

“Look at me,” she says.

 

And she watches me, too. As I watch her dip her head back down, she watches moans as they tumble out of my mouth. As I watch her push her tongue against me again, she watches beads of sweat forming above my lip. As I watch her enter me, she watches me as I say, “Clementine.”

 

“You’re so good.”

 

“Fuck, you’re so good for me.”

 

“I’m gonna come for you.”

 

I can’t call is teasing because she’s giving me what I want. Her tongue wriggles inside me as I close my eyes.

 

_ Don’t fight it. _

 

I open them to take a hand and brush the curls from her face, trying to control my breathing.

 

_ In. _

 

Her blush. Her freckles.

 

_ Out. _

 

Her eyes on mine, swimming inside my brain.

 

_ In. _

 

Her tongue fucking me as she whines. The sound of it. Wet.

 

_ Out.  _

 

I’m coming.

 

I place one hand on her head, my fingers woven through her hair, and cant my hips into her mouth as I come.

 

“Clementine.”

 

She whines.

 

“Clem, I love you.”

 

“Fuckfuckfuck- I love you.”

 

Waves of heat run through me, rippling from her tongue to every extremity. All of this is surreal. I had this concept in my head that sex was technical; medical. But everything is un-precise. I’m in this reality where everything isn’t concrete. Things are disappearing and flitting in and out of existence. 

 

Things work that shouldn’t. It’s twisted. I shouldn’t like this. I shouldn’t like girls. I shouldn’t want.

 

But I do.

 

She withdraws to swallow, catching her heaving breath, and then crawls her way up me, wiping my bangs from my face as she studies it.

 

“I’m sorry,” I squeak.

 

“For what?” she whispers.

 

“For… coming in your mouth.” Somehow saying it arouses me more.

 

“I liked it,” she says.

 

Arousing me even more.

 

Even more, still, when I see my wetness collected around her lips, as though she’d just ate a peach.

 

I tilt my head and kiss her as she hovers on all fours above me. I moan at my own taste, more so just because tasting myself means she was just down there. She leans on her forearms and knees to get closer and I feel her breasts pressing into mine; a comfortable weight.

 

I watch her eyes glaze over, as though they were made of stone, as I strip her of her underwear and notice the wetness that’s collected there before I toss them on the floor.

 

She leans back down. “I-I’m tired…”

 

“You want to stop?”

 

She smiles. “Nah. I meant my legs.”

 

“Oh.”

 

She avoids my gaze. “This might be kind of weird, but can I lie down? Like, on top of you.”

 

I nod.

 

She sighs and lowers herself onto me and I immediately notice something.

 

“I can feel you on my leg.”

 

She locks eyes with me only long enough for me to notice her looking away. “Is that okay?”

 

“Yeah,” I say.

 

She looks at me, deep, and I wonder what she’s trying to tell me until she retains eye contact and grinds against my leg.

 

“Fuck,” she says, her voice cracking. She dips her head lower, her brows furrowed and bottom lip between her teeth, and this time it’s clear what she’s trying to say.

 

“You can hump me,” I say.

 

She gasps as she begins again, her breaths in time with her movements, and I look over her shoulder to notice the toned muscles of her legs as they propel her to and fro. I run the pads of my fingers over the pebbled flesh of her back and help by pulling her into me.

 

“Fuck, Violet,” she whines.

 

My breath mingles with hers as our chests heave against one another and her hips become more erratic in their movements. She begins to whine on every exhale.

 

Everything is hot; my face, my body and the room. Her. I’m surprised she can even get any substantial friction with how slick my leg is. She starts rutting against it, hard, and I figure I can help her by moving my leg up into her. 

 

She nearly chokes. “Vivivi-”

 

“-Yes?”

 

“Need you inside me.”

 

I blush as I snake an arm around her and wet the tip of my finger before pressing it inside of her. I wasn’t expecting it to be this soft and warm. I start moving in time with her grinding and lofty moans. 

 

I want to cup her face and watch the pleasure flit across it, and fuck her, and kiss her all at the same time. She’s pressed against me yet not close enough. I want her to say my name but I’m too embarrassed to ask her to. Every time she says it I feel important somehow.

 

“Violet,” she says, eager.

 

_ Say it again.  _

 

“ _ Violet,” _ she moans.

 

I know she’s moaning because she’s about to come, so I speed up and she keels over, lying mostly on top of me again.

 

“ _ Violet.” _

 

_ “Violet, fuck-” _

 

_ “Viiiiiiiiiiiiii-leeeeeeeeeeet.” _

 

I don’t waste my opportunity to watch her as she comes, feeling her contract around me as she upturns her eyebrows and looks me deep in the eyes as the rest of her whimpers escape her lips. It entirely surpasses any expectation I had of what it’d be like. It feels so private and exclusive- because it is. Nobody’s ever seen her like this before, likewise for me. We’re each other’s first experience.

 

“You’re even more beautiful when you come,” I say, once she’s mostly ceased movement.

 

“So are you,” she says, dazed. “So, so beautiful.” She smiles.

 

I withdraw my fingers from her and look at the wetness collected there before she watches as I put my two fingers in my mouth and taste her. Her own mouth falls open, like she can’t believe her eyes. Then she kisses me, deep and slow.

 

“I love you, Violet,” she says, getting teary eyed again.

 

“I love you, Clementine,” I say, feeling my face prickle and redden.

 

“Violet Adlon, you are the only one I’ve ever loved,” she says, full-on crying. It hits me like a ton of bricks; both her words and her sadness, because I know exactly where it’s coming from.

 

“Shhh, no no, Clem- don’t cry,” I say.

 

She forces a smile and then goes back to crying. “Today’s just very emotional for me. I’m sorry.”

 

“I don’t want to leave either,” I say as she rests her head on my chest, the dampness of her tears soaking through to my skin. Her whole body moves, pressed up against me, when she sniffles, and in a weird way I feel like a part of her. Like my skin could start growing into her skin and she’d sink into me until we’re one person.

 

“I’m not gonna get another girlfriend,” she states.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I’m waiting until you find me and we’re gonna be together. I’ll tell you where I’ll be and when possible, you can get to me.”

 

I want to agree with her but the logical side of me knows it’s just not practical, but for all intents and purposes I agree with her. Because if anybody deserves some fucking good news and peace of mind, it’s Clementine. “I promise,” I say.

 

She presses a chaste kiss to my lips and goes back to resting on my chest, pulling the blanket up over us, and after awhile her breathing becomes measured and rhythmic.

 

I close my eyes, feeling her heart beat with my own, the softness of her skin; noting the places she presses into most.

 

I don’t sleep.


	8. how it feels to rest on your patient lips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something good and right happens for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello guys! I promised, didn't I?
> 
> Life is... strange. Just kidding. But actually.
> 
> LIFE UPDATE: I'm super medicated because of my psychiatric issues but also the medication causes other psychiatric issues. This is relevant because my creative energy can only last me so long. I'm having to pour my energy into my visual artwork more than my literary artwork because my visual actually makes me money and etc. etc. I've actually had this written for a long while but wasn't even cognizant of my need to post it, I've been so fucking distracted.
> 
> I have an actual legit girlfriend right now and a lot of adult things are happening in my life so ending this story is kind of like closing a chapter of my actual life and it's bittersweet.
> 
> If you wanna follow me on Instagram my personal is BlueMorphoVegan and my art is AbigailsWishFactory. Drop in and say hi. It might be awhile until I'm posting fanfic again but if you wanna give me some inspiration I'm totally open to that. Also you guys are so nice, I'd love to be friends.
> 
> I chose the song After Dark by Mr Kitty as my inspiration/mood. It's a good one and I'd love to cover it someday. If you know the meaning behind the song, it's also bittersweet.
> 
> Without further ado.

There’s not enough ways to say ‘my heart pounds’ to make it seem like my heart is truly pounding. My heart pounds. My heart thumps. My heart is like a bird and my chest is the cage and it clinks around inside its confines, trying to claw its way out of me.

Maybe not that intense.

But on top of my heart pounding, I’m nauseated.

24.

25.

26.

Every door I pass I grow more certain she’s not gonna be behind the one I knock on, much less feel the same way she did before. My hair’s grown out past my shoulders and I’m wearing something that was made within the past couple years. Does she still wear her hair in pigtails? Does she still wear that same hat around everywhere?

I lean up against the wall to allow people to pass and to gather my thoughts. I look at the bold lettering of the door number in front of me and remember the bold lettering on the bus she took the last day we saw one another.

I cried in front of a crowd of people and, although none of them were probably looking at me in particular, I felt like the main act of the shitty-things-always-happen-to-me circus. It took everything out of me not to follow that bus. On foot. But damned if anything was gonna get in my way.

If Brody hadn’t been there…

I told her what’s wrong.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” she’d said, tilting her eyebrows at me like I was missing something obvious.

“What good would it’ve done?” I said, sniffling. 

“I need a housemate.”

I only cried harder. “I don’t have any way of paying for that.”

“You can get a job now,” she said, a smile creeping up her face.

“...”

“...”

“Holy shit,” I said.

“So?”

“Hello, former and future housemate,” I said.

It hadn’t hit me yet. I still cried the whole way to the apartment, with everything I own on my back. I hadn’t realized I finally had a place to be, away from my parents AND Minerva. It hadn’t hit me I’d have the possibility of being with Clementine, even after all the times I’d promised.

And now it’s hitting me, as I pass more numbers, dragging my fingers across the wall.

29.

30.

31.

People pass me, huffing in annoyance with how slow I’m moving. But I am positive I’ll throw up if I rush this. I’ll be too nervous. I won’t know what to say or how to act or what reason to give her to be with me.

This is insane, isn’t it? She probably barely remembers me.

I skate my fingers around 53 and Minerva enters my mind. Her red hair, the red I’d made her bleed; the red she’d made me bleed. She leaves my mind as fast as she left my life, which is not fast enough.

But then Clementine.

Her pigtails and baseball cap. Her light freckles and glowy cheeks and toothy grin and warm brown eyes.

The first time we kissed: in that bathroom. I was too busy caring about what she was gonna do to worry about what’d happened with Minnie or who waited on the other side of the bathroom door.

Scared and shaking. Always shaking. Little trembles as she wiped the blood from my face.

My lip is busted.

I don’t care.

Kiss me.

Our first time together. Our first time with anyone was together. And it truly was together. Anything I made her feel, she’d make me feel in return. I wouldn’t just kiss her: she’d kiss me back. I wouldn’t just touch her: she’d touch me back. It didn’t even have a marked start and end point. It just happened. Loved me right back.

As her door stands in front of me like some forbidden temptation, I expect Minnie to be in there, too. I expect her to be in there doing all the things she used to do to Clem without me able to really do anything to stop it other than offering my room to her. 

She stayed with me in my room every night after our first time. Brody didn’t mind. And when Brody would leave…

I miss it.

I want it back more than I’ve wanted anything, for better or for worse.

And so I bring my fist to the door and wait there like an idiot without even being able to knock. My hand is frozen in time and all my insecurities hit me at once.

What if she’s moved on?

What if she doesn’t remember me well?

What if she just doesn’t like me anymore?

What if she wasn’t serious when she told me to come find her?

What if she’s in classes and I have to wait outside this door for an eternity before she gets back?

So I grit my teeth, close my eyes, and fucking knock.

…

…

…

Again?

…

…

…

I hope she’ll open mid-knock as happened many times before, where I’d just stood there with my fist out, too busy smiling at her like a doofus to take my hand down.

But it doesn’t happen.

I remember that time I’d snuck out to her baseball practice and I was the only one on the bleachers and I wanted to kiss her so badly I had to keep reminding myself not to talk about it or try anything. It was the only thing on my mind. The wait was worth it.

The wait was worth it then and it’s worth it now. I turn and sit in front of the door with my knees tucked up to my chest and rest my head against the door. Close my eyes.

Our little prom up on the roof. It’s still beyond me how I ever managed to sing in front of her without losing my mind. Not just singing in front of her, though- singing to her. And she liked it. I was either actually good or she loved me a whole lot. Maybe a bit of both.

When we first met formally. The only silver lining was that it was her I was meeting. I don’t think anyone else would’ve been quite the same. In a weird way it feels like I’m still in a relationship with her somehow, even though we never made things official. It’s subliminally official. I don’t think, in my mind, that I never left her arms.

So when they wrap around me again, instead of freaking out like I thought I would, I move into her and tear up in relief. We hug for a lifetime but not an unbearable lifetime in the slightest.

She moves back with her hands on my shoulders.

“Violet.”

“Yeah?”

“I fucking love you,” she says.

I smile as wide as I can manage. “I fuckin’ love you, too.”

She returns a smile, tears sneaking out of the corners of her eyes. She still has pigtails and she still has that baseball cap.

As sudden as we hugged, she’s kissing me. For a moment I wait there with my eyes still open and then I react, melting into it as naturally as I had with her before. I don’t even have to have the ‘have you found anybody else’ conversation with her because she’s showing me now that, even if she had, they don’t matter now.

She pulls back, catching her breath. “Sorry,” she huffs. “Any other reaction to seeing you wouldn’t work.”

I just smile as my face reddens in relief.

“Oh my god. Your hair,” she says, reaching out and tugging on a strand. “It’s so long.”

“Your clothes. Holy shit, you look amazing.”

“How did you get here?”

I can’t stop looking at her. She’s so familiar, yet different in some essential way I can’t quite pick out.

“I drove,” I say.

“What the fuck?” she says, beaming.

“Right?”

She kneels still, in front of me, tugging on that same strand of hair before realizing she’s doing it and letting the breeze take it from between her fingers. “Come in.”

She stands and takes my hand, like we used to, and pulls me into her room. I expect to get Minerva flashbacks but the room looks completely different than theirs at Erickson’s. 

“Surprised?” she asks.

“Not in a bad way,” I say, clicking the door shut behind me. “But yes. Surprised.”

“I’m a photography major,” she says, adjusting one of the framed photos on the wall.

“I can tell.” I turn my head. “You went to the beach?”

“It’s almost been a year, Vi,” she says, her hands on her hips. “And the beach isn’t that far, which means we have to go.”

There’s an array of photographs in all different sized frames in all different heights on the walls, all taken at different locations of different people and different everything. Girl’s been places.

“So what’s your job now, then?”

I turn to face her and fight the urge to pick at my fingers. “I’m a barista!”

“Holy fuck,” she says.

“What?”

“That’s adorable.”

I can’t force myself to avoid her gaze for long. “You are.”

“Adorable?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

She takes a step closer. “God, I missed you.”

“I missed you more than I’ve ever missed anyone.”

“I just,” she says, stepping closer. “This is so crazy. Your hair is long, you’re driving, you’re a barista… Wait, where are you living?”

“Well, I’m living with Brody, actually,” I say, stepping towards her.

“Brody is amazing,” she says.

“She really is.”

“You are, too.”

“I am?”

“Yeah,” she says, closing the gap. “So be my girlfriend.”

I can hardly smile before I’m kissing her again, my hands finding her hips and her hands finding my shoulders and it’s like we’re dancing again, up on the roof, with the stars hung above us, except this time we don’t have a separation deadline to stress about. It’s just us.

We back away, still holding one another. “Of course,” I say.

I swear another tear is welling up in her eye.

She turns and fumbles with a bag next to her desk and pulls out a little instant camera. She holds it in front of me.

“Can I take a picture of my new girlfriend?”

“Knock yourself out,” I say as she steps back. “Just make sure I look good.”

“Oh, shut up,” she says before the shutter snaps and the little photograph peeps up through the top of the camera.

“Can I see?”

“Once it’s developed, of course,” she says, flapping the photo from between her fingers. “In the meantime, you wanna take a picture of me?”

She hands me the camera. 

“Look through the little viewfinder, here,” she says, pointing at it. 

“Got it,” I say, viewing her through the camera.

“Alright, then press down the button on the top. Oh, but not all the way. Only a little bit. It should make a noise… yeah, that one.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Now press it down when I’m in focus. And when I look nice,” she says.

“Which is all the time.”

She beams. I take the photo.

I stand there shaking it and watching as it develops and we catch up on meaningless stuff, but it matters because it’s her. 

Her hair comes into view with all its stray curls poking out from her pigtails and under her hat.

Her cheeks, full from her smile.

Her freckles. They somehow manage to appear.

Her brown eyes, nearly glowing gold.

The photograph of me in her hand.

Then I realize, as I smile at this picture and then at her, that the striking difference in her between then and now is that she’s not suffering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Until next time, friends.

**Author's Note:**

> I know it was probably hard to get through, but I promise the next chapters will be much more lighthearted.


End file.
